Nick Fury sighed as he watched the end of ASTIR's grand reveal while onboard a helicopter bound for the Tesseract research facility. First, he was notified by Barton that the Cube was showing increasingly worrying signs and now, his other headache had reared its head once again. 

He didn't want to think about all the trouble that technology could cause if it landed in the wrong hands and, in the back of his mind, immediately started forming a team to compete in this tournament. Hopefully, SHIELD could nab the grand prize and monopolize it for themselves. Preventing the rest of the world from Full Dive may have seemed cruel to some, but Fury had done far worse many times before and thus had no scruples in doing so once again.

"Sir, we're approaching the facility and have been cleared for landing," the pilot's voice came over the director's headset.

Fury looked up from his phone and briefly glanced out the window, before nodding in acknowledgment. He swiftly finalized his orders and sent them out as he stowed the device in his coat pocket.

They arrived shortly after and upon entering the lab housing the Tesseract, the super spy could instantly tell something was wrong. As his eyes zeroed in on the glowing cube pulsating with power and sending arcs of light scattering in all directions, his honed instincts practically screamed at him to get away. Alas, he had a job to do and so, he forced those feelings down with great effort before calling out into the room.

"Barton, how long has it been like this?" he asked as a concealed figure dropped from the scaffolding overhead. 

"Since before I arrived, apparently. The doc over there is trying his best to lock it down but nothings worked so far, sir," Clint solemnly replied.

Fury's brow furrowed in apprehension as he came to a decision, "Get more men down here, I want this lab covered from all angles with zero blind spots."

"Barton, you're in charge," he added after seeing the dissatisfied face of Selvig. "You have full authority over the security of this base until that thing calms down."

"But-," the scientist protested, but was cut off by a one-eyed glare.

"I've read your reports doctor. A 'gateway' is what you called this thing, right? Well, to my knowledge, doors happen to open both ways and right now, it looks a whole lot like someone's knocking," the astrophysicist paled at Fury's words and weakly nodded in acquiescence soon after. He had his own theories about what was happening and around 70% of them matched with what had just been said, he'd just been too timid to voice them aloud in fear of being removed from the project.

Within minutes, men decked out in full tactical gear and armed with M4A1's encircled the lab on full alert. The various labcoats in the room were a bit miffed at the intrusion on their workplace, but could do nothing about it. Clint, their now overseer, had already harshly kicked three of them out as a warning after they'd gotten argumentative with the new security.

The facility fell into an uncomfortable silence after that and, for a few hours, seemed as if all the commotion was for naught as the Tesseract began to calm down. That was, until it came roaring back to life with a vengeance…

•••••••••••

"Sir, it seems that Loki has made his entrance. The SHIELD facility housing the Tesseract has collapsed and events are proceeding as we expected," Queen's calm voice came from within his mind as James was catching up on some of the latest One Piece episodes while relaxing on his new couch.

In order to finish up all the additions to the Hub before the whole Avengers affair began, he'd just now got back from a stint in some heavy time dilation. As a reward for all his hard work, he'd splurged a whole .5% of his FP on his favorite movies, anime, manga, and videogames. Though, he found the latter far too difficult to play as a body-less soul and had to reluctantly put them off for now.

"Oh?" he asked with a little excitement. "Well, what are you waiting for?! I'm guessing you nabbed the recordings of everything that went down, so put them up on the TV already and let's watch!"

The AI audibly sighed within his mind but James just ignored her as he paused his anime for later. 

In less than a second, the screen changed to one overlooking a small hangar that appeared to have been converted into a large laboratory. The image was paused right at the scene where the Tesseract was shooting a blue beam into a distorted portal and James was immediately disappointed at the fact that he couldn't enjoy some popcorn at the moment. 

"You do realize that those are real people taking part in these events, right? They're not actors filming a movie for your enjoyment, sir," Queen voiced out after noticing the current attitude of her creator. As an AI who'd been exposed to the rise and fall of multiple civilizations through the VR, she didn't particularly care about the morality of this matter. However, she did worry about how James would take seeing 'real' people die right in front of him.

James snorted at her words and waved her off as he pressed play, "Please, these events were always meant to happen and we're not the only ones watching anyways.

Besides, it's nowhere near as bad as creating your own sentient beings, just to have them die over and over again according to your script. I've long gotten used to stuff like this."

The man paused after saying that as a thought came to mind that somewhat excited him, "Hey, don't you think I'm kinda like the One Above All? If you think about it, we basically do the same thing."

The AI rolled her eyes, "Except he comes up with his stuff himself. You, on the other hand, can only copy the creations of others, sir."

James cut the link within his mind while grumbling. Right after, he tossed away his phone in annoyance and turned up the volume on the TV as he received a text filled with laughing emojis.

'She's getting more and more cheeky as the days go by,' he thought to himself while watching Loki take out guards left and right. 'Just wait until I get a body and go exploring through the reality links. Hmph! I won’t take you with me and leave you to manage the whole VR by yourself while I have fun!'