Phil Coulson felt his head throbbing.
To outsiders, SHIELD might seem like an incredibly powerful, secret law enforcement agency established by the joint authority of the World Security Council.
But only those on the inside knew how difficult things actually were.
If the Sentinel Secret Service was founded to act as a firewall between ordinary humans and the growing population of mutants, then SHIELD was forced to confront the entirety of the extraordinary world.
And what did the “extraordinary world” entail?
It wasn’t just mutants.
It included witches, demons, sorcerers, werewolves, and vampires.
The variety of extraordinary beings was staggering, and SHIELD’s responsibility was to police them and protect ordinary people from ever discovering their existence.
But…
They just couldn’t pull it off.
Although SHIELD had branches all over the globe and boasted a massive roster of agents, their high-end combat power was embarrassingly scarce.
Back when the founder, Director Peggy Carter, was in charge, things had been much better.
For reasons well known to those in the loop, Peggy Carter could use her personal influence to call upon members of the long-disbanded Howling Commandos to help mediate disputes among the various extraordinary factions.
However, those extraordinary members of the Howling Commandos had only helped out of respect for their undisputed leader, Steve Rogers.
After Peggy Carter stepped down, the Commandos still helped SHIELD occasionally.
But as the decades rolled by, that old sentiment had long since faded.
And once the current SHIELD Director took office, that goodwill completely went down the drain.
To put it bluntly, it was a case of the former slave riding on the master’s head.
As everyone knew, extraordinary beings lived incredibly long lives, and they were all more or less traditional and stubborn.
In their era, certain skin colors were synonymous with slaves.
And now, a slave had become the master and was even bossing them around?
It was completely turning the world upside down!
Consequently, once SHIELD’s connection with the Howling Commandos was broken, any illusion that SHIELD could act as the ultimate mediator between the ordinary and extraordinary worlds evaporated.
Now, in the year 2011, SHIELD was not only unable to re-establish its influence in the extraordinary world, but even the single vampire informant they had managed to recruit—Lindsay—had been dragged out of his home and disintegrated just yesterday.
And that wasn’t even the worst part.
The worst part was that Lindsay had claimed the vampires of New York were planning some massive operation.
That was the sole reason why SHIELD’s elite team had deployed to New York in the first place.
Yet they were still a step too late.
Their informant was dead, and they couldn’t even secure his ashes.
But…
While the vampire informant was dead, the vampire hunter was still here.
Coulson rubbed his temples to calm his nerves, glancing at Blade beside him as the thought crossed his mind.
Blade was the very first extraordinary being SHIELD had recruited on their own terms.
Over the years, whenever SHIELD encountered vampire-related cases, Blade was the one who handled them.
In return, SHIELD covered his tracks and provided him with the necessary funding, allowing Blade to focus entirely on hunting vampires.
This was also the reason why Locke had spent nearly a year and a half searching for Blade to no avail.
Under SHIELD’s advanced black technology, making a single individual completely invisible to the world was child’s play.
With that thought, Coulson looked at Blade with an expression that made it clear he was their only hope.
“The vampires in New York are getting restless.
We have to stay on guard, and we’re relying entirely on you now.”
Blade glanced at Coulson and nodded.
“I plan to visit the Satan Bar tonight.”
The Satan Bar was a vampire den hidden in Brooklyn.
Every night, a large crowd of vampires gathered there to party.
Blade had known about the bar for a long time.
When he first discovered it, he had wanted nothing more than to charge in that very night with his weapons and paint the walls red.
But SHIELD had stopped him, arguing that keeping the bar open was a valuable source of information regarding the internal affairs of New York’s vampires.
It was during that period that they turned Lindsay, cultivating him into an informant who visited the Satan Bar daily to gather gossip circulating in the vampire community.
But now that Lindsay was dead, there was no longer any reason for the Satan Bar to exist.
Blade intended to wipe the place out tonight.
It was the perfect opportunity to draw the snakes out of their holes.
He was highly curious about what the vampires of New York were plotting in the shadows.
Coulson thought it over and didn’t stop him.
“Do you need our backup?”
“No.”
Blade shook his head, then flashed a grin that exposed his rows of bright white teeth.
“I’m a professional.”
Coulson didn’t dispute that.
Still, he took precautions.
“Just in case, I’ll have Natasha stay in New York.
If anything official pops up, she can handle the cover-up for you.”
Blade thought about it and nodded.
“Fine.”
“No problem,” Natasha agreed from the driver’s seat.
A short while later, the vehicle pulled over in a neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Once Blade opened the door and slipped out, the SUV started up again and drove off.
Sentinel Secret Service.
Fortieth Floor.
Information Command Center.
The main screen was currently connected to a Sentinel satellite.
Under the satellite’s high-resolution imaging, the feed clearly showed Blade stepping out of the SUV.
Locke stood with his arms crossed, his eyes narrowing slightly as he quietly watched Blade, who had nowhere to hide under the satellite’s gaze.
Blade was curious about him.
How coincidental.
Locke was just as curious about Blade.
After all, Blade was a protagonist.
Wherever he went, vampires were sure to follow.
And as long as he kept tabs on Blade, he wouldn’t have to worry about finding vampires.
With vampires to hunt, he wouldn’t have to worry about running out of Extraordinary Points.
“Damn it!”
“If I had known I’d transmigrate here, I would have forced myself to watch the entire Blade trilogy, even if I had to squint through it.”
“What a miscalculation.”
Locke sighed inwardly.
He had watched or read almost all of the Marvel movies and comics, but only those that aligned with his aesthetic preferences.
A hero like Blade simply hadn’t appealed to his tastes.
After watching a bit of the film and finding himself completely unable to relate to the protagonist, he had simply dropped it.
He hadn’t even known the guy’s real name was Eric Brooks.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have spent a year and a half failing to locate him.
Come to think of it, what exactly was the plot of the Blade movies?
Locke frowned in thought.
Right then, the doors to the Information Command Center slid open, and a visibly excited Brown and Jack walked in.
Brown walked quickly to Locke’s side, grinning.
“We found the location of the Satan Bar.”
Locke raised an eyebrow.
“That fast?
Didn’t you say the company registered to that bar is just a shell?”
Brown shook his head.
“Debbie pulled the surveillance footage from the past two weeks.
By tracing Lindsay’s route step-by-step from the moment he left his house, she managed to pinpoint the exact location of the Satan Bar.”
Locke: “…”