Nick Fury (Earth-199999)

Nicholas Joseph "Nick" Fury, born July 4, 1950, is an American man and the director of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Biography

Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Nick Fury became a soldier straight out of high school, and worked as a spy during the Cold War before joining S.H.I.E.L.D. In 1995, he and his partner, rookie Phil Coulson, investigated reports of a woman "dressed for laser tag" crashing from the sky into a Blockbuster video store in Los Angeles. The woman unabashedly introduced herself as Vers, a member of the Kree Starforce fighting to stop the pending Skrull infiltration of Earth. Fury and Coulson both found this hard to believe until they were fired upon by an extraterrestrial weapon. Vers chased the assailant—a Skrull disguised as a human—on foot, while Fury and Coulson pursued by car. While in pursuit, they received a radio message from Coulson, who was still at the Blockbuster, revealing the man in the car to be a Skrull impostor. Fury and the Skrull fought for control of the car, getting into a serious accident that the Skrull took almost the entire brunt of, killing him. Fury took the Skrull in for a secretive S.H.I.E.L.D. autopsy, during which he was instructed by his boss Keller to work with Vers to uncover the extent of the Skrull infiltration. He traced Vers to a bar nearby, where she inquired as to the nature and whereabouts of Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S., as well as Dr. Wendy Lawson's connection to it. The two arrived at an underground facility in the desert using Fury's clearance and inquired with the security there about Dr. Lawson. They were detained in a security room, but were able to escape through Fury's spy expertise. Fury covertly used his pager to message Keller that he was with the suspect and required backup. He and Vers made their way to a vast records room, and found that Lawson's lightspeed project had been terminated by S.H.I.E.L.D. Furthermore, they found a book of Kree glyphs, indicating that Lawson herself was a Kree. She'd died in 1989 following an unauthorized test flight: pilot Maria Rambeau was said to be the last person to see her alive.

Fury left her to it, meeting Keller as he arrived at the base. Keller addressed him as "Nicholas;" this drew Fury's suspicion, as he is adamant that no one call him anything but Fury. As the two spoke, Fury became convinced that he was speaking to a Skrull, and sent him on a diversionary path through the base in order to find Vers and warn her. Vers and Fury escaped, passing by Phil Coulson on the way. Coulson let them go, apparently realizing that something was wrong with the situation. Vers tapped into her fighter-pilot experience, flying an experimental aircraft out of the base's hanger—a cat named Goose also stowed aboard, much to Fury's delight. The two flew to Louisiana to find Maria Rambeau: they found her and her daughter Monica living there, and explained the situation. Maria had been Vers' best friend when she lived on Earth as Carol Danvers. Danvers had been the one to fly in Lawson's unauthorized test flight, and according to record had died in the crash. Later that day, Talos and Norex visited Rambeau's home under peaceful pretenses. Talos possessed the black box from Danvers's crash, which the government had claimed was destroyed. Talos was also terrified of Goose, which he claimed was a dangerous Flerken. The audio recording in the black box sparked Danvers's memory of the events surrounding the crash, including her abduction by the Kree.

The revelation shocked Danvers to her core. Talos explained that the Skrulls were galactic refugees after having refused Kree rule of their home planet, and that finalizing Mar-Vell's research into a lightspeed engine was the only hope in saving his race and escaping the Kree for good. The group determined that studying the coordinates in Mar-Vell's jet from Danvers's memories would allow them to locate Mar-Vell's lab in orbit, where they would find the core. Danvers, Fury, Talos, and a hesitant Maria Rambeau (along with Goose) teamed to fly to the lab, while Norex stayed behind to imitate Danvers and throw Yon-Rogg off their trail. Danvers commemorated her detachment from Kree society by changing the colors on her Starforce uniform to red, blue, and gold—matching the USAF insignia—creating what would be her signature gear for years to come. Norex modified the craft that Danvers had stolen from the P.E.G.A.S.U.S. base to allow for the space travel required. In orbit, Danvers used her Kree gear to decloak Mar-Vell's laboratory, which revealed itself to be a colossal Kree imperial cruiser. They quickly found the core, a glowing blue cube called the Tesseract, and stored it in a lunchbox from Mar-Vell's desk. There was also a large holdout of Skrulls, including Talos' wife Soren and their child. Mar-Vell had kept them safe there, warning them not to send any signals or they'd be found by the Kree. They were soon ambushed by a Starforce platoon led by Yon-Rogg, who took advantage of the suppressor on Danvers's neck to leave her effectively defenseless, easily claiming the Tesseract. The Kree forced Danvers to commune with the Supreme Intelligence, took Goose captive, and prepared to jettison the humans and Skrulls into space. As she communed, Danvers unleashed the energy deep inside her, destroying the suppressor and realizing her potential. Effectively, she was filled with the power of an Infinity Stone.

Glowing with pure energy, Danvers ran through any Kree forces who opposed her, becoming utterly unstoppable. The amount of energy involved sent an electromagnetic disturbance throughout the lab, causing the Kree's technology to malfunction and freeing their captives. She claimed the Tesseract and tried to hand it off to Fury, but he was hesitant to hold it. Goose revealed its true nature, consuming the Tesseract with humongous tentacles sprouting from its feline mouth. Danvers told Fury to escape with the others while she took the lunchbox and confronted the Starforce platoon as a diversion. Fury and the others were able to escape, but Minn-Erva and Yon-Rogg each pursued them in smaller craft. Danvers grabbed hold of Yon-Rogg's craft, trailing it into Earth's atmosphere, while Rambeau shot down Minn-Erva. Yon-Rogg shook Danvers off and she plummeted to the ground, but dug even deeper inside herself and realized she could fly. She fired upon Yon-Rogg's ship and forced him to crash land. Meanwhile, a fleet led by Ronan the Accuser arrived in orbit and fired several ballistic warheads at the planet, determined to wipe out any and all Skrulls at any cost. Danvers demonstrated her catastrophic power by grabbing one of the warheads mid-flight and using it to destroy the others. She flew into space and obliterated the fleet's defenses, flying straight through one of the ships and destroying it from the inside in moments. Realizing what they were up against, Ronan ordered a retreat. Danvers spared Yon-Rogg, and sent him back to Hala. While playing with Goose, Fury received a scratch in his left eye: he thought it was nothing serious, but Talos recognized it as something far worse. Fury would go on to lose all function in the eye, and would soon wear an eyepatch for the rest of his life. Later, with the humans and Skrulls safe, Danvers agreed to find the displaced Skrulls a new home elsewhere in the universe. She asked Fury to keep the Tesseract safe on Earth, and modified his pager to allow intergalactic contact. She told him to use it to contact her only in the case of an emergency. She bid farewell to Fury and the Rambeaus, and led the Skrulls off to their new home.

The arrival of multiple potentially dangerous alien races and of the incredibly powerful Carol Danvers inspired Fury to create what he initially called the "Protector Initiative," a project designed to assemble other extraordinary beings to protect Earth from extraordinary threats. Upon discovering a photo revealing Danvers's military nickname, "Avenger," Fury renamed his project the "Avenger Initiative." Fury kept Goose as a pet, and some time later the Flerken regurgitated the Tesseract, allowing S.H.I.E.L.D. to properly take it into custody.

Avenger Initiative

By 2008, Director Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. at large had begun their Avenger Initiative, an operation designed to form a team of superheroes to defend the interests of the United States. One of the earliest leads on a potential member of this team came when Fury heard of an experiment involving the super-soldier serum, the material that had produced Captain America during World War II. The subject of this experiment, Bruce Banner, was on the run after the experiment went horribly wrong and caused him to intermittently transform into a large green monster that came to be known as the Hulk. Fury tracked Banner down to a dive bar somewhere in America, and utilized several other undercover operatives to agitate him. Banner soon transformed into the Hulk and threw one of the operatives across the room, storming out through the wall. Fury ruled out the Hulk as a potential Avenger, but considered him worth keeping an eye on nevertheless. Later, after Tony Stark revealed himself to be the mechanized hero Iron Man, Fury approached him in his home and offered him a place in the Avenger Initiative. Stark was initially put off by Fury's intrusion and bluntly declined the offer; Fury wasn't dissuaded however, opting to employ the services of special agent Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow. He assigned Widow to go deep undercover in Stark Industries as a rotary public to get as close as possible to Stark himself.

Fury received a lead on the potential whereabouts of Captain America's body. Cap had crash-landed into the Arctic Circle in 1945, and was never recovered. While rigorously searching the icy wastes near Greenland, six months after first speaking with Tony Stark, Fury was called into a virtual meeting with the World Security Council, annoyingly halting any progress the search had made. The Council determined that the Avenger Initiative was a waste of resources, and instead determined that all focus was to be put on Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. and ascertaining how best to use the Tesseract. Fury was irritated at this, and decided to simply lie to the Council about what he was doing and continue as planned. He maintained his attention on Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, and the search for Captain America. He learned that Agent Jasper Sitwell was on Banner's trail, and Coulson informed him of a bizarre atmospheric disturbance above New Mexico.

Most pressing to Fury was the fact that S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists had attained a sample of Tony Stark's blood and detected poisonous levels of palladium, giving him 72 hours to live. The palladium powered his arc reactor, which ironically was responsible for keeping him alive. The best the scientists could offer in the way of a cure was lithium dioxide, which they said might buy him some time. Fury learned Stark's location, and he and Black Widow made haste there. Stark was coming off a drunken night of revelry on his birthday, depressed about his impending death, and was now at a donut shop in the early morning. Widow injected him with the lithium dioxide, and she and Fury took him back to his home. Fury gave Stark a set of materials and documents from his father Howard Stark, who had (partially) invented the arc reactor. He told Tony to find a way to cure himself, and assigned Phil Coulson to keep him under house arrest until he did so.

Stark, naturally, did not take kindly to staying still. Coulson was also not overly committed to keeping Stark in place, as he was focused on the developing situation in New Mexico. Stark broke house arrest to handle his own personal business—Fury asked Coulson for an explanation, and he clarified that the atmospheric changes in New Mexico may be indicative of the development of a wormhole. This revelation caught Fury's attention, and he reassigned Coulson to observe the situation up close instead of watching Stark. He also assigned Hawkeye and Jasper Sitwell to watch over the proceedings in New Mexico, wary of potential conflict. On the third day of Fury's "big week," Stark synthesized a safe new element that proved a suitable replacement for the palladium in his arc reactor, and quelled the threat of Ivan Vanko. Black Widow also recovered various data from Hammer Industries in the process. Widow also advised that while "Iron Man" would be a good choice for the Avenger Initiative, "Tony Stark" would not, owing to his unpredictable personality. Fury told Stark that S.H.I.E.L.D. were only interested in him as an "advisor" for the time being. Having reassigned Sitwell, and with the Stark situation smoothed over, Fury assigned Widow to keep an eye on Bruce Banner, who had resurfaced at Culver University in Virginia. Widow disguised herself as a student to avoid attention.

Not long after her arrival, Banner transformed into the Hulk and commenced a large battle with forces led by General Thunderbolt Ross. Fury ordered her to prevent Ross from capturing or killing Banner, but Widow was entirely a non-factor. Emil Blonsky had been "enhanced" by Ross to counter the Hulk, and the overall might of the battle meant that Widow could do little to influence it. In New Mexico, the atmospheric disturbance had turned out to be the Asgardian Thor, who defeated a large automaton known as the Destroyer that had been sent by his malevolent brother Loki. Thor went on to form a basic alliance with S.H.I.E.L.D., recognizing their mutual benevolence. Coulson's S.H.I.E.L.D. forces recovered the Destroyer. Fury received word that General Ross had breached the S.H.I.E.L.D. database, and confronted him at an Air Force base in Maryland for an explanation. Ross told him that the World Security Council had cleared him to access the database, and that they didn't trust Fury alone to handle things. Fury further warned him to take Blonsky out of action, but Ross brushed him off. Fury put in a call to track down Banner and get Widow to his location once more.

Once again, Widow could do little but watch as Hulk fought Blonsky, now known as the colossal Abomination. Hulk defeated his foe and ran off to his escape. Widow returned to Fury and told him that the time had come to accept that S.H.I.E.L.D. were hopelessly outmatched with their current capabilities. She convinced him that basic human skill and firearms were of no use against "gods and monsters" like Hulk and Thor. Fury had Widow observe as he contacted the World Security Council, who were annoyed that he hadn't pushed forward on work on the Tesseract. Instead, he told them of all the things he and S.H.I.E.L.D. had done that week: helping Tony Stark save his own life, allying with Thor, "running interference" on the Hulk-Abomination battle, and sending out another team to continue searching for Captain America. Fury also believed that each of these except the Hulk situation would help with their knowledge of the Tesseract in the long run, and obliquely chastised the Council for giving Ross the access necessary to turn Emil Blonsky into the Abomination. He insisted that the Council support him in these endeavors in order to allow S.H.I.E.L.D. to adjust to an increasingly dangerous world. Surprisingly, the Council were receptive, and told him he would have what he needed by the end of the month. Tony Stark's new element proved to be useful for handling the Tesseract's power level in ensuing experiments. Fury hired Erik Selvig, a scientist who had associated with Thor in New Mexico, to work closely with the Tesseract.

A year after Fury's "big week," S.H.I.E.L.D. found Captain America in the Arctic. He was frozen in suspended animation, perfectly preserved and alive. They thawed him out and put him in a 1940s-esque room for when he awoke, hoping not to shock him. Cap saw through the rose and broke out, fearing it was a Hydra plot. Fury personally arrived and told him the situation—Cap proved to be a willing, if jarred and disoriented, ally. Fury received reports that Selvig had been acting strangely, and assigned Hawkeye to watch over him and the Tesseract.