By Zach Oberman

The following is based on Mighty Avengers #12-13,written by Brian Bendis, who has masterminded this whole Secret Invasion thing. The invasion looks promising, but in our opinion, Nick Fury’s been acting weird.

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Author: Daisy Johnson, Agent of “F.U.R.Y.” Mood: Cautious Listening to: My crazy boss ranting

Okay, this is officially the worst job I’ve ever had. Even worse than the six months at the fro-yo store where my manager was always staring at my boobs. See, I work for Nick Fury, the eyepatch-wearing ex-director of S.H.I.E.L.D. When I first met him, he was Mr. Secret Agent, recruiting me to be one of his super spies. Then he got us kicked out of the agency, and ever since he’s been going downhill. FAST.

The man is insane. It’s like he can’t let go of the idea that there’s some huge conspiracy going on. Maybe that’s normal after you’ve spent forty years frisking everyone you meet; I don’t know. His paranoid fantasy du jour is not only that Earth is under alien invasion, but that it’s an invasion by the Skrulls, a race of shapeshifters, so they can presumably be anybody. I’d take him more seriously if I hadn’t spent five years hearing him make the same accusations about Communists.

This started shortly after he left S.H.I.E.L.D. He was shacking up with one of is old agents when he started to get a feeling that something was wrong. He describes it as an itch on the back of his neck, but how much stock am I supposed to put in that? The man has been exposed to a whole lot of chemical warfare over the years, and an itch either means danger or that he’s once again convinced that his skin is covered with spiders.

He says he followed this woman using a watch that turns him invisible. Sure, sure – and I have socks that make me lose weight. Anyway, Harry Potter and his digital Invisibility Cloak caught this woman betraying him, so he shot her, and according to him, that’s when she changed into her original alien form. All aboard the crazy train! At first I thought that maybe he has too much time on his hands, but now I’m worried that his delusions might not be that recent. For instance, I asked him if he had really had sex with a Skrull, and he laughed this scary laugh and told me I needn’t worry; he hasn’t had skin-to-skin contact with a woman for twenty years, ever since he learned that the Russians invented herpes. Ooooookay. Keep in mind that this man could have launched nuclear missiles.

Now I’m part of his super-secret plans to save the world from the spacemen. Normally I wouldn’t think you could run that type of operation out of a basement, but he tells me it’s not really a basement, it’s a high-tech facility that’s just been made to LOOK like a basement because that’s the last place the aliens would suspect. He says our base has everything he needs to monitor events worldwide - I wonder if he’s talking about when he stays up for eight straight days on methamphetamines watching four TV’s tuned to public access channels. (I tried to quit once, and later that night I woke to find him sitting on the edge of my bed with a gun in his hand and a wild look in his eye… I told him that after giving it some more thought I had decided to stay on a while longer.) And when I said earlier that I’m an agent of F.U.R.Y., it doesn’t actually stand for anything, but he insists that it’s how we are to refer to ourselves.

Want to hear how we’re going to save the planet? (It’s probably dumb for me to do this because God only knows what Nick will do to me if he finds out, but I have to tell somebody.) Nick has files on a bunch of kids who, like me, are the children of obscure super-powered heroes or villains, and who have some powers of their own. “Caterpillars,” he calls them. The theory is that since the aliens could be anyone, no one can be trusted except for some unknown kids that no self-respecting invaders would bother to impersonate - kinda like the basement – and I’m in charge of recruiting.

Here’s who we have so far. We have a chick with the ability to run really fast – though once she stops she gets shot right back to where she started. I suggested we call her “Beer Run.” Then we have this socially awkward fat dude who believes his dad left him a magic book. Wait a minute… socially awkward, fat, dude, magic book… I’ve got five bucks that says this book can only be activated with “enchanted” twenty-sided dice. We’ve got the grandson of the original Ghost Rider, who can make super-powered chains. His powers are decent, but how much can we really hope for given his lineage? I mean, how could he possibly live up to the family tradition of mediocrity? My fingers are crossed…

Oh, I almost forgot our most impressive member: the ten-year-old son of Ares (as in, the god of war.) The kid’s name is Phobos, and he’s the god of fear. Just making eye contact with him is enough to scare most people out of their wits. I always thought we called that a lazy eye, but apparently my fifth grade math teacher was also a god of fear.

Oops. Looks like the Skrulls are going to have to wait - Nick just barged in to tell me that someone tried to sneak a high-tech tracking device into his omelette at the IHOP. The sneaky bastards made the device look exactly like a piece of eggshell, you see. He believes it’s the work of the Belgians; he says they always try to get you at breakfast. That’s why he doesn’t eat waffles. He now believes that the Belgians have discovered special radio frequencies that chickens use to communicate, and has asked me to whip up some “anti-poultrometry” devices.

Send help,

Daisy