Logs:Exacting

Exacting
Dramatis Personae Fury, Lucien
In Absentia	2024-12-05 "You got any particular concerns about my 'muster'?"
Location <IS> The Westfjords - Iceland
The stark landscape of Iceland is otherworldly even in the more populated regions, and this deserted part of the Westfjords might as well be another planet. There's a stretch of dark impenetrable coastline to the north and west, a range of soaring angular mountains to the south, and the foot of the Drangajökull glacier looms in the east, glowing faintly with reflected aurorae. The daylight had gone fast -- all three hours of it -- and SHIELD's incident cleanup is still ongoing. The floodlights set up around the site are huge and powerful and look like mere trinkets against the imposing landscape around them. The long glassed furrow in the earth and the faintly glowing wreckage at its end look like an afterthought in all this. "What the hell is wrong with Nordic people?" Standing on the observation deck atop his mobile command center, Director Nicholas J. Fury of SHIELD is probably not seeing too many Nordic people at the moment. Agent Sigurðsson, maybe, though who can tell the personnel apart in their heavy winter gear? Fury's own coat is heavy and hooded -- black, of course, likewise his gloves and boots. "There's villages down the southern reaches this godforsaken peninsula. Don't think we're gon' need much information containment, long as we don't find any goddamn yuppie-ass hikers out here looking for arctic foxes or whatever the fuck the tourist brochures sellin'." He shakes his head. "I do not have enough boots on the ground for this bullshit." "Vitamin D deficiency, perhaps. Past that I think you will need to be more specific." Lucien, though certainly not Nordic, looks perfectly at ease here in his surprisingly trim-fitted green-on-grey parka, its hood currently pulled back though he has at least deigned to wear a snug furred headband around his ears. His hands (tucked into his own pair of warmly lined gloves) are folded behind his back, and he's just slipping back over from where he has been conversing with -- which of the SHIELD personnel is it? With their back turned now perhaps it will be a mystery for the ages. "The aurora, most likely. It is quite active here this time of year. -- You know there is a potential solution to that particular problem." "In this case, Icelanders." Fury shakes his head. "Real live Vikings on an island tryna kill them three ways to Sunday. At least three. I wouldn't be shocked if a troll come shambling down off that glacier right this minute." He darts a quick glance at the foot of the glacier, just in case. The glance slides aside to Lucien, flat and unimpressed. "You itching to whip up some recruitment material? Be like one of them whack-ass Marine Corps monster-fighting ads. 'Cept for how we got actual monsters, which attracts a lot of actual dumbasses. Ain't your department but you know how many goddamn 'volunteers' we get? Shit." He scoffs. "I still got some folk in the UN and the feds sending me promising candidates that come their way, but it ain't exactly a steady stream. Right kind of crazy motherfucker is hard to find. You got a pool of those lying around somewhere, you let me know." "I have a startling reserve of incredibly competent maniacs, but I suspect the majority would not pass your muster even if they wanted to work for you." Lucien is drawing up alongside Fury, his head tipping up toward the sky above. "-- I hesitate to bring it up, but not passing your muster may possibly be exacerbating the difficulties. A touch." Fury huffs, his not-quite laugh condensing thick and white in the frigid air. "You know, back when we was just the X-Files of Peacekeeper intelligence, I knew -- really knew -- erry single one of my team. Trained with them, drank with them, bled with them. Trusted them, much as I trust anybody." He looks faintly embarrassed by this admission. "Then Lensherr lit a fuse under the whole world's ass with his 'bomb'." He doesn't show the scare quotes with his hands, but it's perfectly evident in his tone. "Somewhere between Liberty Island and when Coulson's team brought Cap home, shit got away from me." He heaves a long-suffering sigh."I still know every agent by name. Gon' come a day I won't even know that." He studies Lucien sidelong. "You got any particular concerns about my 'muster'?" Lucien's eyes have to the glassy streak and the glowing prize nestled at the end of it. It takes some time before he volunteers, neutral, "You are consummately scrupulous in your personal standards." "Goddamnit, Mister Tessier." There's little bluster in this -- Fury just sounds tired. "Maybe if I was a little less, we'd've picked apart Toure's booby trap in time. Or made any headway tracking down the idiots who offed him." He leans forward on the railing of the observation deck. "I got nothing against powers. I just like to know what I'm working with, and the wild type is..." He gives a bitter, humorless chuckle. "...mainly what the UN wanted me to deal with. I been known there's bigger, badder marvels out there." His eye also tracks to the crash, his lips compressing. "Might be high time to hedge my bets with the home-grown ones." "There are vanishingly few of mutants on the planet and an infinitely wide multiverse, it seems. Most of the ones powerful enough to make a difference on this scale likely already have their plates rather full." Lucien's hands unfold, coming to rest against the railing beside Fury. "I had no specific judgment on your mutant hiring policy. I think that question skirts the real issue entirely. You are an absolutely peerless intelligence officer, Director Fury, but as a manager --" One of his hands tips up, out, towards the glowing crater in the distance. "These strikes will not stop coming. At some point there will be no choice but to get a bit more relaxed about what you choose to delegate, or -- I imagine the universe will simply choose for you, non?" "Relaxed," Fury echoes, leaning into his disdain for the prospect with near comical intensity. Significantly, though, he does not supplement this with laughter or profanity. "Well, the Universe got another thing coming, I reckon. No plans to lower my standards, but I am fixing to delegate like you never seen me delegate before. You'll get a brief about it soon as the funds are secure, and you know the Council will deny me nothing right now." His brows scrunch down, his eye skipping over the hooded heads of the personnel below. "Damn, I do not remember calling in this many agents. See, back in the day, I coulda clocked everyone on this crew by the way he walked." He shakes his head. "Onward and fucking upward."