The Legendary Mechanic in Marvel Universe

Chapter 162 Agreement with Fury

TL: Kyous

H.Y.D.R.A. spies were deeply rooted within S.H.I.E.L.D., something that was necessary to be disposed of. However, if Leo’s condition was to become S.H.I.E.L.D.’s head, then Fury would unconditionally reject it.

Leo was a single person and it was possible for Fury to verbally accept. Once the matter was resolved, he could disobey and chose not to listen to Leo’s commands. But the matter wasn’t as simple as it appeared. Not only was he unable to accept such an act, but Natasha also described how fearsome Leo was during the call.

If he promised Leo beforehand but reneged it later on. Who knew whether or not Leo would murder him in a fit of anger? 

After some pondering, Fury felt the probability of it happening was great. Although Leo was a reasonable man, it was when others played by the rules. Leo was someone who was even more defiant than others.

Thus, Fury would unreservedly decline Leo’s condition of becoming S.H.I.E.L.D.’s head. He didn’t wish to enter a tiger’s mouth right after leaving the wolf’s den.

Having this thought, Fury believed it was pointless to haggle with Leo. He blurted outright, “Mr. Erwin, I understand your intentions. Although I can’t figure out why you’re helping me willingly, it’s clear that I’ve no other choice but to cooperate with you. I’m happy to accept the credit for exterminating H.Y.D.R.A.’s leader and I’d prefer the spies within S.H.I.E.L.D. be cleared out. On top of that, the director’s seat is quite tempting as well. But, what you will receive from me is limited. Whether it’s money or technology, all of them are no issues. Even if you want to be a national symbol and hero just like Captain America, I’ll do my best to form your image. However, I absolutely can’t agree to let you be S.H.I.E.L.D.’s mastermind and I also don’t want you to have any interference with the U.S. government agencies. This is my bottom line! It remains the same even if I die.”

Listening to Fury’s determination, Leo knew it was out of the question for him to be S.H.I.E.L.D.’s mastermind. Regardless, he had no intention of being a controller either. Otherwise, the sentence he said to Fury should be “I’ll be the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and you’ll be the second-in-charge.” instead of, “You’ll be the Director of S.H.I.EL.D. and I’ll be the man behind the scene.”.

In fact, Fury misunderstood his meaning. What Leo meant by behind the scene was literally behind the scene. He didn’t have any intention of meddling with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s affairs. All he wanted was an identity within S.H.I.E.L.D. and to be able to play with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s high-tech stuff.

According to Leo’s initial plan, if he could control S.H.I.E.L.D., then it was possible for him to smoothly gained the Tesseract. This was his real motive. Besides, he could come in contact with various superheroes that would appear later on through S.H.I.E.L.D. Then, he could secretly pull all of them to his sides. After that, he could let all the superheroes do the labor, such as searching and competing for the Infinity Stones for him.

However, all of these thoughts weren’t worth analyzing in detail with Fury.

Therefore, Leo replied, “No problem. I don’t have to be S.H.I.E.L.D.’s mastermind, but I need an unrestricted identity within S.H.I.E.L.D. Nothing else, just let me have the rights to access SHIELD’s database and a certain amount of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s resources. I’ll just treat S.H.I.E.L.D. as a library for technical knowledge. To be frank, only some of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s intelligence and technologies interested me.”

Leo aptly altered his statement. As long as he possessed this identity, his initial objective was still achievable and this also wouldn’t poke Fury’s bottom line too much.

As imagined, with these conditions, Fury was able to accept it. He asked, “Then, how should we cooperate?”

Finally, Fury agreed with Leo’s conditions. He felt Leo’s integrity was rather trustworthy. At least, he believed Leo wouldn’t stab him in the back. Since all Leo was asking was an identity and he felt this identity had no real power, so he easily agreed with it.

Seeing Fury was asking Leo the details of cooperation, Leo asked back, “Do you want a violent method or a peaceful method?”

“What do you mean by violent and peaceful?” Fury was puzzled.

“Violent means I storm into S.H.I.E.L.D. and kill the spies one by one. Peaceful means we collect evidence and you deal with it with legal means. As for their ending, you should know better than I do.” Leo didn’t possess any good feelings for H.Y.D.R.A., killing those SHIELD members wouldn’t burden him psychologically.

Fury’s attitude changed fairly quickly as right now he was considering the problem as a director. “Let’s go with the peaceful method first. If half of the S.H.I.E.L.D. suddenly passed away, I’ll just be taking over a pile of mess.”

“If that’s the case, then we’ll work hard to search for evidence. As a matter of fact, I have detailed personal data of H.Y.D.R.A.’s spies here. Can this be used as evidence?

What Leo referred to was the information he obtained from Dr. Zola’s database, which included the spies’ personal and training histories.

It caught Fury’s interest. “Can you send it to me?”

Leo was fine with it. Next, he hung up the call and dragged the still unconscious Sinthea and Bucky to the chairman’s office on the sixth floor with Natasha.

Removing the armor, Leo stuffed it into the cabinet behind the door. He sat in front of his desk and turned on the computer. 

“Steam, grant this computer access to the lab’s database.” Steam’s “ears” and “eyes” were installed in his office, but not the “mouth”. So, Steam silently carried out the order. After he did some clicking on the computer, the list of H.Y.D.R.A.’s spies popped out. Finally, he sent the data to Fury through the communication channel between Natasha and Fury.

Ten minutes later, Fury called, “I’ve roughly read the data you’ve sent. If it’s dealing with spies with low positions, then this information is enough. They can’t resist the investigations. But if dealing with those experienced and powerful people, it’s far from enough. According to the data, they were legal citizens when they were born and joined SHIELD when they weren’t corrupted. Besides, S.H.I.E.L.D. just started to corrupt from within, so their background is clean enough. This information is not enough to send them to prison and I also can’t explain the origin of this information.”

Leo thought for a bit after hearing this and said, “Fury, I have a plan that can lure the snakes out of its hole and even let the snakes fight among themselves.”

“What plan?” Fury asked.

Leo replied, “Talking about this plan over the phone is a bit complicated, why don’t we meet up instead?”

But Fury suddenly fell into silence. Leo instantly guessed Fury’s thought and chuckled, “Why? Afraid of meeting me? We are business partners now, are you afraid of me harming you?”

“Honestly, yeah, a bit.” Fury was quite frank, but he still decided on meeting up with Leo. He inquired, “Then, when are you coming over?”

Leo could meet Fury anytime he wanted, but it depended on when Bucky and Sinthea woke up. So, he answered vaguely, “At least two days, at most a week. I’ll call in advance to inform you.”

Fury hummed in response, indicating his agreement before hanging up the call.

In a moderate-sized apartment in San Francisco, Fury placed down the phone and sat back on the chair. It was five in the morning and the sun had yet to rise, but he had no desire to sleep and had no intention of going back to bed.

Today, he had reached an agreement with Leo. Despite it being a result of careful consideration, he still couldn’t suppress the anxiousness in his heart. After killing the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., he would be sitting on that seat. How wild would that be?

Shaking his head, he suppressed the excitement within him. He sat straight up before starting to read the data Leo sent over a moment ago.