Avengers #1

Marvel: Redux Presents....
Avengers #1
"Avenge! Part One: Anger"
Written by Craig DeBoard

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs. This sentence contains every single letter of the English alphabet. All twenty-six of them.

Bucky Barnes only needed one word though to describe the thousands of emotions running through him at the moment: Anger.

"Talk," he whispered softly into the man's ear.

Bucky slowly pulled the 9x19 mm Walther P99, German semi-automatic pistol out of the man's mouth. The man swallowed hard. His balding head seeped blood from being bludgeoned with the pistol not 30 seconds earlier. Sweat beads dotted his forehead, and tears and snot streamed down his face. His fat hide was on the cement flooring leaning against a tall wooden crate containing hundreds of teddy bears which contained themselves, massive amounts of heroin. The lights in the warehouse were all out, save for one. The security guard swallowed hard. He had taken the job in hopes of making easy money with little to no work so as to afford to one day leave America to find a place to live where he didn't have to fear being arrested for a simple traffic violation that had turned into a bench warrant. Hooking up with Hydra did not entail this in the brochure.

CRACK!

Bucky Barnes, the former side-kick of Captain America, now known as Winter Soldier, grabbed the man's chin hard, slamming the back of his head into the crate.

"TALK!" he growled, shoving the barrel of the pistol into the side of the man's nose.

"P-puh-please...oh God, don't f@%$in' kill me! PLEASE!" the man cried.

"I'm not going to kill you," Bucky whispered, his eyes shifting telling the man's eyes to shift to the gun. "I'm going to blow your nose off. You don't need it to still live. And you certainly don't need it to talk. After your nose, I start shooting off....other things. Now TALK!" he finished in angry tones.

"God, please don't--"

BLAM!!!

"GAHHHH!!!! AHHH!!!!" Muh nob!!! Ahh guh!"

"Where?!" Bucky yelled, ignoring the blood and soft chunks of flesh that were once the man's nose, splattered on his face.

"Luher Luhull!! Tuh duh!! Tuh duh!!"

"Lower lever? Two floors down?" Bucky confirmed.

"Un-huh," the man grunted.

Bucky looked down, seeing the puddle of urine the man how now expelled. He then stood and aimed the gun at the man's forehead.

"GUH!! PLU DUH DOO DID!!!! PLU!!!" the man screamed, blood pouring from the center of his face, down into and out of his mouth and onto his chest.

"You run. You find anyone who will listen. You tell them the Avengers are back. You tell them we actually avenge our dead. You tell them that no one can hide. Go." Bucky said, emotionless.

"GEHHH!!!!" the man howled stumbling as he got up and ran off through the warehouse looking for the closest exit he could find.

Bucky holstered the pistol, and headed toward what looked to be a shipping office. Most would say that he had lost his mind when Captain America had been shot and critically wounded. Bucky said it was the new World War and no different. Bucky said, that in war, there are no rules. You do what needs to be done, at any cost.

"You realize the shot is going to be heard by locals and they'll call the police," the voice said.

Bucky quickly spun pulling the pistol back out. The man stepped from the shadows.

"Fury," Bucky said keeping his weapon aimed at the former director of S.H.E.I.L.D.

"Barnes," Nick Fury replied, holding up his hands to show that he wasn't armed.

"This isn't your business Nick. Crawl back to congress and beg for your job back. I have work to do," Bucky said, keeping the pistol aimed at Nick.

"But it is, Barnes. I'm here to offer you something," Nick Fury replied slowly lowering his hands.

"Do I really need to say it?" Bucky asked glancing at Nick Fury's hands.

"Keep 'em where you can see 'em. Fine," he replied, raising his hands again. "The tech weapons you're looking for aren't here, Winter Soldier. It was a set-up."

"And I'm willing to bet you did the setting up, didn't you," Bucky replied.

"Am I really that easy to read?" Nick Fury replied.

"Like a dirty magazine. So if this isn't an A.I.M. warehouse stocked with weapons, what is it? Better yet, what do you want? Nick Fury doesn't offer anything without getting something in return," Bucky asked, lowering his weapon finally.

Nick slowly lowered his hands and found a crate smaller than the others and took a seat. He pulled out a cigar and lit it, puffing hard.

"This here isn't anything more than safehouse the feds use to store heroin in that they get from cartels down south. I provided the A.I.M. intel to get your sorry ass here so we could have a little chat. It's about your new 'Avengers', actually 'avenging'," Nick Fury responded.

"There are no Avengers. That's simply said to make these heels wondering where they are, when all they're seeing is me. Fear goes a long ways, Nick. If you're here wanting to offer help, forget it. I don't want anything to do with the classic team-up crap. Sharon Carter is dead and Steve Rogers is in a coma he may never come out of. I want whoever it was that was responsible to pay," Bucky replied, crossing his arms over his chest as if he didn't care to hear much more of the conversation at hand.

"That's where you're wrong, soldier. You see this isn't the classic team-up crap that you so lovingly like to refer to. This is me offering you exactly what you came here for. Ammo. Weapons. A means to make sure no lunatic ever has the audacity to plug a hero full of sniper bullets again," Fury said.

Bucky stared silently for a moment.

Fury stared back.

"Keep talking," Bucky said.

"How about instead of talking, I just show you. LIGHTS!" Fury shouted.

All of the lights burst on inside of the warehouse causing Bucky Barnes to squint hard and adjust. Upon opening them again he looked around and saw them. Nearly one hundred armed guards, all aiming automatic rifles at Bucky, were outfitted in standard HYDRA uniforms.

"Wha- WHAT THE F@%$! IS THIS, FURY?! WHAT THE F@%$! Wait. Wait. You aren't Nick Fury. You're that f@%$ing lunatic, Max Fury, Nick's doppleganger, aren't you?!" Bucky yelled in shock.

Fury motioned with his hand a bit, and the HYDRA soldiers lowered their weapons.

"No. I'm not. I'm Nick Fury. No Max Fury. No life model decoy robots. No clones. No holograms. I'm the real deal, soldier," Fury responded, pulling a flask from the inside of his trenchcoat and offering it to Bucky.

"This is horse-s#!t!" Bucky yelled, still in shock, refusing the flask.

"Is it?" Fury asked. "Or is the fact that we've been lied to this entire time by our government, horse-s#it? How many men have our so called leaders shook hands with and called allies, only to later kill them. Hussein, Bin Laden, Gaddafi. How many of our soldiers have been killed in wars based on lies and greed? What do you think our Secret War was all about? How many more of our men have to die to get you to wake up and realize, maybe we're listening to the wrong guys? Does Steve Rogers need to be shot AGAIN to get you to see that?"

Bucky stood in silence.

"Maybe we've been wrong, Barnes," Nick said softly.

"Fury...these guys have worked with Nazis! The Red Skull! Are you insane?!" Bucky replied, still in shock.

"They did in the past, yes. But it's the new millinium. This is a new HYDRA. That Registration Act got Goliath killed. It killed Sharon Carter. It almost killed Steve. That was S.H.E.I.L.D. That was all S.H.E.I.L.D. They call themselves peacekeepers, but really they're the police of the world. So tell me....who's policing them?"

"I-I don't-I don't know," Bucky said feeling defeated.

"Look, you're right. What HYDRA was, was horrible. But what has S.H.E.I.L.D. become? Locking away people who defend the public and ask for nothing in return? Demanding personal information? Show me your papers? How are we not any different now than Nazis? Than what HYDRA used to be? We aren't. This new HYDRA isn't about world domination. HYDRA can't dominate the people of this world if the people of this world are already dominated. The new HYDRA is about setting things to how they once were. To fighting lies and injustice. To make sure honest men like Steve Rogers aren't left lying in a coma at the hands of his own government, simply because he was defending the constitution."

Bucky was silent.

"Barnes. We need you. This is what the Avengers have to become. This is what the world needs. If we don't stop S.H.E.I.L.D....who will?"

The two men were silent.

Bucky finally spoke.

"Where do I sign up?" he asked.

"Let me introduce you to the rest of the team," Nick replied.


The small jet landed on the runway near the Five Great Mountains or Wu Yu in China.

As Bucky and Nick Fury rode in the jeep being driven by a soldier of HYDRA, Nick Fury explained a little more.

"As you can see, this has been in the works for some time. When I realized what our government had become, I knew a new direction was needed. So we had this base built here in China. America can't send forces here to investigate. It would cause an international calamity that the United States just can't handle right now."

"Who funded all of this," Bucky asked, surprised and still a bit skeptical as the jeep made it's way to a fenced gate.

The gate opened and the jeep drove through and headed down the road toward a cliff face. Upon closer inspection, Bucky soon realized the cliff face was actually a hangar door, camouflaged perfectly.

"When Valerie Cooper was assigned as a mutant liaison to deal with X-Factor back in the nineties, I knew our freedoms were slowly disappearing. No group should be singled out like that. It was at that point I started putting a little back every now and again into off-shore accounts to fund all of this."

"How much did you put back," Bucky said in shock as they pulled into the hangar seeing jets, vehicles, and cyborg technology that was reminiscent of the same technology Hank Pym had used to create Ultron.

"The amount I got on each paycheck was obscene. So I'll leave your imagination to decide how much I was afforded to run S.H.E.I.L.D. The 1% that the Occupiers whine about have nothing on the amount of money that program receives," Nick responded.

The two men climbed out of the jeep. Nearby were a group of people standing and waiting for their arrival.

"Winter Soldier, I'd like to introduce you to the team of Avengers, you're going to lead..." Nick Fury said.

"Black Widow. Dum Dum Dugan. Solo. And myself."

Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier stood silently staring at the four operatives in front of him, before finally speaking.

"Let's Get To Work."

NEXT ISSUE: Death.

Man this is HOT! Craig!!! Now on to read #2!

Thanks!

This is amazing, totally outside the box I cant wait to see where it goes, Great job Craig

I'm re-reading all of the Avengers you wrote, back to back. and just finished this one. I a new kick each time and can't wait to get to number 5! Bad ass!