A New Brand of Freedom

by Spettro138

Prologue: An Arctic Discovery

Time: Unknown
Location: Unknown

The icy cold wind of the north whips and whistles in the starless night, covering the frozen wasteland in a raging blizzard that eliminates all visibility for any living thing that dares to live in this inhospitable land. The only thing that can be seen for miles around is two pairs of headlights slowly growing larger and larger in the distance as they approach their final destination in this unforgiving landscape. To help them on their way, a figure holding a beacon, waves to the vehicle, signaling it to approach him. Soon, the car comes to a halt as the occupants of the vehicle step out in thick winter clothing and goggles, suitable for the climate that they are daring to enter.

Both men that came out of the vehicle approached the man holding the beacon who greets them professionally.

"You the guys from Washington?" asks the man. "We've been expecting you for a while."

"You get any other visitors out here?" one man replies sarcastically. "Other than the polar bears, lemmings, and caribou?"

The other man ignores his travel companion as he gets straight to business as they began walking towards what brought them there.

"How long have you been here on sight?"

The man carrying the beacon holds his hood down to protect his head against the ice.

"Since this morning sir," the man replies. "A Russian oil team scanning the area called it in about eight hours ago."

"I'm surprised they didn't try to take it for themselves," one of the men joked.

"That's why we have guns," the other man said in a mocking tone.

The first man from the vehicle gives the man with the beacon staff a questioning look as they continued onward crunching through deep snow.

"How come nobody has spotted it before?"

"It's really not that surprising sir," the man with the beacon says with a shrug. "This landscape is changing all the time. Do you guys have any idea what this thing is exactly?

"I don't know, but it's probably just a weather balloon," the first man concludes dismissively. "Probably just from a local meteorologist."

The man with the beacon simply laughed at him in a disbelieving manner.

"I don't think so. You know, we don't have the equipment for a job like this. We figured you guys did. Your other pals arrived here with the stuff just about two hours ago."

"How long do you think before we can start craning this thing out?" the second man asked quizzically.

"I don't think you boys quite understand this," the man with the beacon chuckled again. "You guys are gonna need one hell of a crane!"

Then he stopped as he moved out of the way to show the two men what he was talking about. The first man widened his eyes as he stared up at the hunk of unknown black metal towering up out of the ice. Snow was beginning to cover it, threatening to make it disappear entirely. Another man was standing on top of it, examining it with a flashlight.

"The CIA guys got here I'd say about eight hours ago and started surveying the immediate area. Figured that they must have gotten the tip about the anomaly first."

"It's more like we allowed them to see it first," the second man chuckled. "Chain of command and all that."

"The Director has a pretty wry sense of humor that way," one of them said.

"Sounds like something Coulson would pull."

The first man looked at it with fascination, trying to figure out exactly what it was. The trio hurried to the other side to get a better look at it. When they got to the other side, the first two men saw hundreds of tiny red beacons outlining something big that was no doubt connected with the piece of metal sticking up out of the ice.

"What in the world?" the second man exclaimed.

The man with the beacon signaled one of his men to bring something, and after fifteen minutes of waiting, his associate drove up in a high-tech vehicle carrying several instruments used for various scientific purposes. The man directed him to a specific spot in the outline and gave him a hand signal when he wanted him to stop and start operating.

The first two men watched as a robotic arm came out of the vehicle and poked a hole in the ground. A long blue laser came out of the robotic appendage, slowly cutting a hole into whatever lied just below the thousands of layers of ice and snow. The two men watched the procedure as a group of others move around various pieces of equipment.

Soon enough, the laser halted its drilling as a piece of ice and metal fell down forty feet and clunked against something. The team set up a pulley system to let the two men go investigate below. Then they got into protective suits as a precaution against any toxic substances or chemicals they might contact before they were lowered down.

The first man descended into the dark below, grasping a flashlight in one hand and the line in the other. When he reached the bottom, he unhooked himself and awaited his associate while examining his immediate surroundings.

The second man followed him down soon after and radioed the people above.

"Okay, we're in."

He looked around and observed that they appeared to be in the corridor of an airplane of unknown make.

"What is this?"

"I don't know." the other grumbled.

Who made it and why it was there were questions that they intended to answer as they began their slow and steady search throughout the inside.

The duo slowly inched through the plane, carefully moving their lights along every inch of it to determine what it was. They kept their guard up, preparing for anything that might happen.

"This looks like a cargo bay," the first man said to himself. "Everything must have decayed a long while ago."

Soon, they came to one end of the plane where they saw the main cockpit window was located. Their feet crunched through the inches of snow that had accumulated within the confines of the plane. The first man stumbled on an unseen obstruction for a moment, to which the second man cautioned him. They both began scanning different parts of the cockpit. As the first man slowly, but surely approached what looked like the pilot and co-pilot's seat, he looked around the immediate area for anything of interest. Surely enough, something caught his eye right behind the seats while he was scanning with his flashlight. Something that was hiding just underneath a thin layer of snow. With one of his gloved hands, he brushed away much of the snow and found what was there. The man stopped as he could feel his eyes start to widen and his jaw begin to drop in awe.

"Lieutenant?" the man asked with a slightly alarmed voice. "What is it?"

The second man froze in his tracks, not believing what he was seeing. Wiping crusted snow and ice off of his wide black goggles with his sleeve, he did a double-take.

"My....god!"

The second man activated his radio once again, reporting to one of the men back on the surface.

"Bay? Go and get a line to the Colonel right away. We found something I think he would like to see."

The man on the other end was silent for a moment and then responded.

"But it's 3 AM sir. He's probably asleep."

"I don't care what time it is!" the first man snapped with urgency. "These two have waited long enough. Far too long...."

The two were left in silence and the darkness of the submerged frozen plane once again as they stared at the star-covered shield in the snow and a pair of black horseshoes with fire-red accents that were laying right beside it. They looked up to the cockpit seats and found two figures one human-sized and one infant-sized, frozen solid together as they appeared to be embracing each other.

Author's Note:

Here we go, the start to my third project and the start of my own PWNY-verse stories. Give me your thoughts and tell me what you think. Make sure to like and favorite!

And if you didn't catch it on the title page, YES this does follow the canon of the movies and the game. I will slip in a bit of comic lore here and there, but I will tell you when I do.

Comments

[Motorbutt]

I'm interested

[Well Geboren]

Chuckles in glee and snark at the craziness about to unfold.

[Gravity012]

Well then. Here we go.

[Dinomite123]

Time: December 1944
Location: Antarctica