DC: Becoming Doomsday in Marvel Universe

Rook Tanner wasn't making things up. He truly knew that S.H.I.E.L.D. had long been infiltrated by HYDRA, including its current top commander, Alexander Pierce, who was, in fact, HYDRA's highest-ranking agent within S.H.I.E.L.D.

Being both S.H.I.E.L.D.'s and HYDRA's top man, could S.H.I.E.L.D. even be considered salvageable?

Rook had spotted that HYDRA agent purely by chance. When the people around him stopped aiming their weapons at him, he instinctively scanned his surroundings. His X-ray vision picked up the HYDRA tattoo.

Even within Fury's own team, there was a HYDRA mole.

Fury was both shocked and furious. He immediately ordered that the agent be apprehended. Of course, the big shots didn't need to get their hands dirty. Hawkeye handled it remotely, coordinating the capture.

"Who would have thought HYDRA's ambitions would still be burning?" Fury clenched his fists, his face shifting from pale to red in anger.

After all, HYDRA was supposed to have been wiped out.

Fury had never imagined that HYDRA had been reborn right within S.H.I.E.L.D.

The tangled history between HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D. was a long and messy one, stretching back to World War II. Back then, HYDRA was led by Red Skull and was believed to have been defeated alongside him.

But that was far from the truth. HYDRA had used S.H.I.E.L.D. to rise from the ashes, lying in wait for decades, biding its time.

Rook shook his head. He knew the root of it all. HYDRA had once recruited a scientist named Dr. Zola, who possessed highly advanced technological knowledge. One nation had seen value in him and took him in.

That was like inviting a wolf into the house. It was Zola who planted the seeds of HYDRA's infiltration, allowing them to burrow deep until even S.H.I.E.L.D.'s highest leader was one of theirs.

It was the ultimate failure.

But that wasn't Rook's problem. He had just happened upon the situation and casually pointed it out.

The feud between S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA was theirs to settle.

Fury had the agent restrained, then turned back to Rook with an even more probing gaze.

"How did you know he was HYDRA? For that matter, how do you even know about HYDRA?" Fury asked, suspicious.

As far as most knew, HYDRA had been destroyed after World War II. Even many S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were unaware of its continued existence. Fury might have suspected, but not that it had embedded itself so deeply.

Rook certainly couldn't say he'd seen it in a movie, so he casually made up a reason.

"Since I chose Earth as my place of refuge, I did some research beforehand. That's how I learned of a group like HYDRA. As for how I spotted him, I have X-ray vision."

Natasha bristled at that, her skin crawling. Without looking back, she muttered, "Pervert."

"I haven't even looked yet."

"Well, don't."

Fury, Coulson, and Hawkeye all felt a headache coming on as they listened to the two bicker out of nowhere. But they understood Natasha's reaction. She was the only woman in the room, and the idea that Rook could see through things naturally made her uneasy.

Rook quickly tried to explain again that his X-ray vision worked like medical imaging, only showing bones and organs, not what shouldn't be seen.

But Natasha shot back, "If that's true, then how did you see the tattoo?"

Busted.

A tattoo was on the surface of the skin. If it really was X-ray vision, he wouldn't have seen anything on the surface, only what lay beneath.

Rook glared at Natasha.

Natasha was ready to act, snatching up a pen and looking like she might jab him in the eye with it.

Luckily, Fury and Coulson intervened quickly to stop them.

Fury, with his commanding presence, shot Natasha a look that told her to settle down and keep taking notes on what Rook was saying. This was still an interrogation, and they needed to learn as much as they could from him. They were just getting started.

"Name," Fury said, getting down to business.

Rook understood. "Rook Tanner. Rook Tanner-El. I'm Kryptonian, from the House of El. And I wasn't some spy or anything. I was the First General of Krypton's military force. At our peak, my army had three hundred thousand soldiers. Later, because of our universal expansion campaign, it was divided into three units. I was left with just one hundred thousand under my command."

As he spoke, memories of life on Krypton surfaced, and a trace of sorrow flickered in his eyes.

Those one hundred thousand soldiers had ultimately become one hundred thousand Doomsdays. To protect Krypton, his home, his family, and his friends, he had been forced to stop the mindless Doomsday army and destroy his own troops with his own hands.

And because of Doomsday's nature, he hadn't dared leave even a hair or speck of matter behind. It had all been completely erased.

Fury and the others were stunned. First at the revelation of Rook's rank, and then at the mention of Krypton attempting to colonize the universe.

Were they insane?

"We almost succeeded," Rook said with pride. Krypton had once spanned the stars. Of course, that was in the DC universe, not this one. If not for the war with Apokolips, even the Guardians of Oa and their Lantern Corps wouldn't have been able to stop them. Krypton had nearly conquered the entire DC cosmos.

But in the end, they had failed.

"We failed, so there's no need to worry. We're gone now," Rook added, his smile bitter with pain.

(Krypton: Could you stop saying we're gone? We're not gone yet. At least give us a few more years!)

Rook hadn't been evasive. He revealed much of his story, partly because he needed to let it out. Ten thousand years of solitude within the heart of the sun and all that had happened before weighed heavily on him. He needed to tell someone.

After all, this was the Marvel universe, not the DC one. Even if he shared secrets, it didn't matter.

And if Fury couldn't find Krypton? That was a problem for another day. Maybe Rook would be long gone by then anyway.

So he used the moment to both vent his anguish and put S.H.I.E.L.D.'s suspicions to rest, hoping they would stop pestering him.

He could always drop the bigger bombshell if they pushed him too far. Did they want to know the gods of myth were real? That Asgard and the Norse pantheon existed, and even God Himself?

Did they want to hear that?

By the way, Rook's Kryptonian name really was Rook Tanner-El. And El meant the House of El. The same El as in Kal-El, better known to us as Superman.

Rook was the ancestor of Superman from ten thousand years ago.

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