Doorman (MCU SI)

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #31

Ta-Lo [January 20, 2008]

–Colin Baxter–

Sipping on his banana shake, not for protein but because he loved the taste of it, he looked at the list of items that Dr.Banner had sent, for his lab. In his own words, Dr.Banner thought that all these items should be available on the open market, just for a premium.

"I'll look into it. How are you handling the new Accommodations?" He typed and sent in the chat, the isolated kind, with a Kamar Taj assigned wireless connection that pinged off the nearest Sanctum network, which was New York, from where there was a hardline connection to Kamar Taj, wherein there was a centralised internet node installed by yours truly that would connect to any number of off planet sites if he needed to.

Faster than light information transmission baby!

Once he had another node set up and running in Kamar Taj, he was going to be offering that as a service to Ta-Lo, in exchange for a modest fee of a continuous meat and milk supply. Oh, he could just feel his inner capitalist cheer at that, providing goods of vastly lower cost and quality than the ones he would be getting in return.

He was pretty sure he could hook some billionaire, one of the nicer ones, and then sell them the secret to slowed aging, without any surgery, botox, or what not.

"Nah, too much work," He muttered as he closed his eyes and landed in his mindscape, with the giant tree doors surrounding him.

"Hmm, as expected," He went near the CHI door and examined it, and as expected, the door was now slightly larger than before. Due to his experiments with the CHI door, something that almost led to his death, it was no longer a door in the traditional sense, just a door shaped opening in the trunk of the giant tree that was now the largest out of all the seven gates he had.

It was not a problem, as far as he and Jin'Ya could see, but it does indicate that continued use of the Doors and the powers within could possibly widen the pipeline, leading to what? He does not know but he was more than willing to find out.

He had two, maybe three truly useful Doors for combat. CHI, Air, and the Kinetic Lasers. Those he used the least because there truly was no need for them. The usual spells, and his ability to heal en-masse made it quite easy for him to defeat most foes, mystical or otherwise. He also had a sinking suspicion that due to his inherent value, the Ancient One refused to send him on truly dangerous missions, doing her best to guard him.

Opening his eyes, he was back in front of his screen, and grinned as Dr.Banner replied, "The rooms are nice and roomy. The food is better than expected. How did you even build this whole thing without anyone noticing? I checked all the photos we have of Mars and not once, did I see anything resembling anything even if the telescopes were capturing this exact location."

Ah, the man had already figured out the rough location of the Red Hearth on Mars? The man was smart, no doubt. He needed someone that smart on his side, to counter Tony's smart ass if there ever came a need to.

"Ah, but Doctor, that would be telling and we do have a meeting scheduled later in the day. I just have some other stuff to do but I will be there at 6 PM Earth time. See you then!"

Closing down the chat terminal, he willed the connection to leave, making the inside of his computer glow orange for a moment as the wireless network to the New York Sanctum was shut down, being replaced by the hard line fiber he had at his Earthen Bachelor Pad.

While the connection itself was unique and very safe, because no one knew it even existed, the ping was atrocious and the speed and reliability was still something he needed to work on.

For now, it was fine. Hell, it was even better than some old school internet connections that some of his neighbours still used but it was nowhere near the expensive fiber he had at his apartment.

"Jin'Ya?" He mentally pinged his partner in shenanigans.

"Yes?"

"Can you see if anything is happening in Wakanda?"

"You know that–"

"Yes, yes, I know about the divine protection surrounding the country. No, I am talking about the Border Tribe Members, the ones who live outside the shield's protection."

"Let me see." After a beat, the reply came, "No, the Divine Protection extends to the surrounding areas around Wakanda as the country has laid claim to that land, even if they do not advertise it, thus fulfilling the condition to get the necessary Divine Protection."

He exhaled and cut off the connection. Something about the whole Wakanda thing was bugging him more than expected. Maybe he was expecting something from the War Dogs, given that Jin'Ya told him that it was all already logged digitally.

On some level, he actually wanted them to come at him. It burned at him to know that they were still doing something so evil, something that should have been beneath them by all costs. Having Vibranium alone was such a cheat, let alone the fact that they had Shuri on their side now, so early in the timeline too.

There was no way of knowing exactly what technological nightmares she had cooked up in her personal lab and why she had come here. Jin'Ya told him that while he could still read their minds while they were outside Wakanda, it was still limited.

There was a barrier in their mind that blocked Jin'Ya from accessing anything sensitive or commanding them to do something that went too against their current mindset. It was all very complicated but as it turns out, the Divine Protection from Bast was all too real in this timeline, even though the Egyptian Pantheon had all retreated from Earth's supernatural scene.

It even extended to a mental shield for all their members that the likes of Jin'Ya couldn't breach, not without Bast being alerted about it, and then potentially something bad happening to the people whose minds were being read.

He had some visuals from the inside that could be used to open portals but even that would be a bad way to start a hopefully cooperative relationship with the most powerful nation on the planet. He knew that the T'Chaka administration was rotten to the core but he was hopeful that T'Challa would do better.

That is why he would not take any action until he finds solid proof and even then, no killing Wakanda operatives, even though the temptation would be there.

Sighing, he shut down his PC, changed into his Gym clothes, and after locking the apartment, he hailed a cab to go to the gym.

He had appearances to keep regarding his physique. Also, not gonna lie, it was nice for his ego to see all those buff people admire him as he lifted weights that bordered on Superhuman. Not really into the realm of superhuman but very close to human limits. It was his way of getting female attention from like minded people, though his efforts had yielded more male attention than expected.

____xx_____

Wakanda [January 19, 2008]

–Shuri Udaku–

She ignored the calls to open the Lab by her mother, and even her brother as she sat alone in her lab, reeling from the conversation she had with her father–no, the King of Wakanda, because that man could not be her Father.

Her father would not have sanctioned the murder of 50 people whose only crime was being smarter than the scientists in the Royal Sciences Lab of her country. Her fists clenched as she read the reports, detailing the advancements that Wakanda withheld from the rest of the world, simply because they did not have the same advancement in sciences and wanted to keep it for themselves.

Her hand went to her mouth, her body staggering back as she read the reason one Dr.Caldwell was killed.

"Just because he thought…?" She whispered as tears, unbridled fell from her eyes. Wiping her tears, she read through the rest of it, and that only stoked the flames of rage inside her.

Dr.Caldwell, a promising bioengineer, killed off, simply because his theoretical work on nanotube targeted regeneration and elimination of cells simply came too close to being able to enhance people to the point of creating mildly powerful super soldiers.

She exhaled and moved on to the next file, burning all 50 names in her mind as she thought of all the advancements in the world that had been snuffed out simply because her father and his Council thought them too dangerous.

How could they not see that his work was in an early stage, and the outside world still had no hopes of creating what he theorised, let alone ten years ago?

She realistically knew that the outside world was not all rainbows and there was a very real chance that it would have plunged the outside world into a World War if any one country was found to have super soldiers.

And yet, as she went through the list, she found many advancements in fields that were totally unrelated to things that could be turned into weapons. Advancements in radar technologies, better deep sea sensory technology, stronger energy transmission, better medicines, and more.

Once she was done going through the entire list and the flimsy reasons provided for the state sponsored execution of all these people. Worst thing was, she couldn't even trust this list to be complete because the War Dog protocol for stuff like this was supposed to be minimum paper trail, with verbal reporting preferred.

Sighing, she waved her hand and shut down the hologram, and walked towards the biological corridor of her lab. She looked around at all the stuff she had access to, every material she could ever need, all the staff and funding she wanted and suddenly, she did not want that anymore.

It felt…tainted.

Trudging towards the sealed doors that kept a version of Vibranium that absorbed 20% more energy than their standard Vibranium alloy but was rendered inert when exposed to air, hence the vacuum sealing, she gave all her biometric access for the door to open.

In truth, this vault held something far more valuable and dangerous than just an unusable variant of Vibranium. No, it held things that she would rather not show to anyone, stuff that would have even her family turning on her.

"Griot, prep the Regen chamber, procedure SP-17U." She commanded her latest attempt at creating a digital assistant and stepped into the ice cold vault. Taking a few steps in and ignoring the shelves of Vibranium variations, she pressed her foot on a specific tile for just three seconds before the tile collapsed inward, revealing a staircase. Descending into the fortified vault, she looked at the single vial of purple liquid floating innocently in a field so strong that even the strongest weapon she had ever made wouldn't be able to even dent it.

Touching the forcefield, she winced at the slight burn she felt before the forcefield recognised her blood and quantum signature as it let her hand through. The refinement in the identification process and the modulation of the forcefield was not something she put much effort into so the process burned her hand continuously, and yet, it did not feel much in comparison to the betrayal she got from the person she thought she knew well.

Shredding that last bit of hesitation, she grabbed the vial and pulled it out of the forcefield, wincing at the smell of burned skin in the air.

Gripping it tightly with one hand, she ascended back to her lab. She had an important procedure to perform.

Maybe it was time for the Wakandan Royal Rule to change, for the better.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #32

Royal Laboratory, Wakanda [January 20, 2008]

–T'Challa Udaku–

This was bad. Very, Very bad. Shuri has had some pretty intense sights with Baba over the years, related to Scientific practice, funding, applications of technology for worldwide application, and more, yet, this was the first time he had seen Baba this disturbed by the whole thing.

It had been over four hours since Shuri locked herself in her personal lab, the one place where no one except her had the authority to go. Not even the King's access codes could open the damned door, and with the way Shuri built the whole lab, it was basically impossible to force their way in without destroying what was inside as well.

So, they were all stuck out here, in front of a closed door, unable to know what was happening inside. The Dora Milaje tried everything and the rest of the Royal Labs members tried to come up with something to get past the encryption keeping the place locked down but they had known from the start that it was a fool's endeavour.

Shuri, his little sister, was always the smartest person in the room, capable of dismantling anything and everything with her eyes and creating new inventions seemingly on a daily basis. There was no way anyone else could crack her code and it was as they feared.

Without using a particle cannon, something that had the potential to punch through Vibranium, they had no other way of getting inside the laboratory. According to SHuri's own words, the lab was self sufficient with enough food, water, and energy inside it for an entire team to live out there for weeks.

He confirmed the data and it was only Shuri inside.

"Baba, what exactly happened?" He asked his father for the nth time, still curious as to what could have happened to set Shuri off like this. His eyes narrowed as both his mother and his father did not meet his eyes as Baba replied with the same answer as before, "I cannot tell you that, T'Challa. Maybe once you are King."

That made no sense unless it was something classified but if it was so classified, then how come SHuri knew about it and he didn't?

Knowing that it was futile asking his father, he turned around and began speaking, once more, into the intercom system, hoping that his sister was still listening. It was horrible, not being able to help his sister.

What use was having all this power, the power of the Black Panther coursing through his veins if he couldn't even help his sister when it mattered–

He stiffened and lept back as he heard something. The door's locking mechanisms clicked for a second before the doors began to recede into the ground. The giant bomb door was a two piece door, one part went up into the ceiling and one part into the ground.

"Stop! Don't go any further!" He snapped at the Dora Milaje advancing steadily as he was still hearing a buzzing noise. He was proven correct a moment later as a blue grid of crisscrossing energy became visible before it too dissipated a moment later. Then, they saw yet another blast door and another energy grid collapsing before the final wooden doors were visible.

The same ones that he thought were the main entrance to the lab. How in Bast's name did Shuri build so many security measures without anyone even realising it was a question that was going to haunt the Palace security team for years to come.

Leaping over the space where the previous security measures were, he landed silently near the doors and without wasting any time, pushed them open. There was no telling what might have happened to Shuri. He had to be there–

He stiffened as soon as the doors opened completely, revealing the scene of the Lab to him. Involuntarily, he lept right back, landing right next to Baba who sported a look of complete incredulity on his face.

He was pretty sure he had the same face right now.

There, standing in front of a broken glass tube, was Shuri, in a hospital gown, and yet, it felt like she was the strongest warrior he had ever faced.

He, the Black Panther, was feeling afraid of the person who was in front of him. More importantly, his body was somehow registering his own sister as a threat to his life.

How could that be?

"H-How? What? What did you do?" Baba whispered from the side as he watched, for the first time in his life, his father looking completely resigned to something. Shuri watched all of this with a stone cold look on her face.

He helped steady Baba as they both came to terms with what Shuri had done and what she had become. She had received Bast's blessings and approval and had officially become a Black Panther.

Shuri was a Black Panther.

The thoughts registered in his mind and yet, they seemed incredibly difficult to believe.

Not just a Black Panther, Shuri had done something, bypassing the traditional way altogether, and become much stronger than him. There was no way she was a normal Black Panther now.

Credit to the Dora Milaje, all of them took a step forward, without pointing their weapons at a member of the Royal Family because that was treason, in response to Shuri gliding across the distance between them simply with a single tap of her leg.

He tensed in response, unsure of what was happening but Baba seemed to go slack in his grip, resigned to everything.

Somehow, he found his voice in between the madness, "Shuri? What have you done?"

Shuri looked at him and he exhaled in relief, the tension bleeding from his body as she subjected him to the same look she always did, one of pure disdain and contempt.

Without saying a word, she looked at her Baba and said, "Using my Authority as the premier Guardian of Wakanda, with Bast's blessing, I hereby declare the end of Project Greater Good. If you all wish to go against Bast's will, please feel free to challenge me."

That was…impossible because Bast's word was absolute in Wakanda. If she wished for people to start killing themselves, the people might just do that.

Shuri sneered, "How you had the audacity to call the Project that will always remain a question for me. Now, please leave, I have some tests to run."

Saying her piece, with the same languid movement, she tapped her foot on the ground and landed dozens of feet away, in the same spot he had seen her for the first time. He could do nothing but watch, in shock and awe, as the doors closed on their faces.

As soon as that happened, Baba collapsed, and they all had to rush him to the doctor.

What was Project Greater Good? And why did Baba react so adversely to Shuri becoming a Black Panther? Wasn't it for the better of the Kingdom if Bast deemed her worthy?

Later on, he would find out that having two Black Panthers exist at the same time was an omen, passed down from Shaman to Shaman who were responsible for protecting the Heart Shaped Herb, depicting a scene of Wakanda being split into half, its legacy exposed to the world, as the end of the existence of the country began with the introduction of a Second Black Panther.

____xx____

Meanwhile, back on Mars, in the Red Hearth

–Colin Baxter–

Unaware of what kind of political as well as divine turmoil was happening in Wakanda over the fact that he was going to be targeted by the War Dogs soon, Colin was in the elevator, with a hot bowl of soup made up of ingredients sourced directly from Ta-Lo, as sort of a welcome gift for Dr.Banner.

He was going to show Dr.Banner his real face, his original identity because the man was an incredible ally to have, and a show of trust like this should go a long way in securing the support of someone who was basically the one person not tied down to a country or an organisation who could match the likes of Tony in terms of intellect and Thor in terms of power.

The elevator dinged open and he entered the kitchen, smiling at the now standing form of Dr.Banner who gawked at his open face. He expected the man to say something, anything other than, "Holy Shit! You're just a kid!"

He slumped. Okay, that was fair. He was, "just a kid" in the Doctor's eyes but that was only because the man was so much older than him.

"Hey! I am 18 now. Plus, according to some ancient cultures, if you had the ability and mentally to be able to kill a man with your bare hands, you were considered an adult in the eyes of society. Soup?" He offered the bowl of piping hot soup to the man, who took it robotically and sat down on the dining room table.

"So, how are you liking the Red Hearth so far?" He sat down opposite the man and casually asked the man.

"Eat it while it's still hot. It's awesome, trust me," He gestured at the bowl of soup, while he mentally called on Jin'Ya. Since he was here, might as well introduce the Doctor to the Guardian of the Red Hearth.

Better to avoid complications later on. If he remembered correctly, each and every outer wall, the actual shell of the Red hearth was fortified to such a degree that the Hulk would need multiple full power hits to break out of them but even then, both he and Jin'Ya agreed that in case of a disaster like that, the best bet was to open the hole in the roof and throw the Hulk out of it.

Once the Hulk passed out, they could bring him back in. It will be painful and uncomfortable but that was their best bet to control the Hulk without damaging anything in return.



If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #33

Red Hearth, Mars[January 20, 2008]

–Colin Baxter–

"So, you're some sort of magician, capable of opening portals to anywhere in the solar system with ease?" Bruce asked him as they stood on the balcony, made specifically to enjoy the endless expanse of red, sipping on Strawberry Quick. For some reason, he liked this more than beer.

Then again, he had yet to try the truly hard alcohols, mainly because of overprotective Old Men capable of casting enchantments that could detect Alcohol in their house.

"You will only get Hard liquor when I tell you, and that is not happening a day before you turn 21." He still remembered Wong's chiding face as his finger was pointed at him so many times that day.

He nodded at Bruce's question, "More or less. I just wanted to be transparent because full disclosure, I or rather, we are going to need your abilities, both, scientific as well as your physical prowess."

Bruce took one look all around him, at the red desert, the mountains, the sun in the distance, the breathable air, and at the structure built around him, and mumbled, "At Least you are honest about that.

"So, what do you need me for?"

"Right now? Not much. I didn't want to push it all on you all of a sudden but I have stuff that will be keeping me busy starting next week and just wanted to get this all over with so you can start making progress.

"Once again, progress on what?"

"Well, I'll just show you. Come on," He threw the now empty bottle into one of the trash chutes nearby, which had the ability to clean better than anything that currently exists.

Together, they entered the elevator and stopped at the training floor, an expanded space that consisted of multiple training spaces with multiple terrains.

He even had an underwater world that could simulate the water pressure ranging from a hundred meters underwater to a dozen miles below the sea level, generating a truly incredible amount of pressure that would turn anyone he knew into fine mist instantly.

He glanced at the now nervous and fidgeting Doctor from the side of his eye.

Well, maybe not him.

"Voila! A training space. Something to help you, me, and anyone who might live here in the future, relieve stress."

"I see." Bruce gave a suspicious look at the space, which, while large, was not in any way occupied to be used as a training room even by normal humans, let alone by superhumans.

He rolled his eyes, "Follow me."

Using his access, he opened the general purpose gravity room. This one did not have the gym but just a giant empty room with panels specifically enchanted for absorbing physical blows and redistributing that force across the panels and if that proved insufficient, across the entire Training room as well.

He was still way too far from reaching even 10% of the maximum limit of the room but he was sure that the Hulk would put this room's as well as the enchantment's integrity to test soon enough.

"What is this?"

He spread his arms wide, "This, Dr.Banner, is the training room. The one place where you can wreak havoc without damaging anything."

Bruce chuckled nervously, "I don't think you understand. The Monster, he, he can destroy anything. This room will be nothing to him."

He smirked, he was waiting for this, "I can understand your skepticism, Doctor. Now, as I told you before, I am a man of many abilities, some can be explained, some cannot. I'd like to show you how this room works if you will?"

"Yeah, sure."

He snapped his fingers, making a Door appear in front of him, only this time, it was blinking an ominous red. Oh yeah, he could do that if he wanted to.

Honestly, the amount of aesthetic changes he could do to his Doors was mind boggling.

"Whoa!" Bruce took a step back and so did he. He mentally called on Jin'Ya, who used his awesome magical guardian powers and summoned a block of Titanium in front of them. He took hold of the giant block that was twice as large as him, without breaking a sweat since Titanium was light and he was super strong, and presented it to Bruce who was standing by his side–no–he retreated even further when he saw the block.

"Hey! What are you so afraid of? Come, check this. It's a solid block of Titanium."

"Okay."

"Now watch this," He threw the block ahead and both of them watched as the Red Door followed the Block. As soon as they were aligned, the Door pulsed a deep red before a beam of Kinetic Laser, probably six feet in width shot out of the Door and pretty much enveloped the block of Titanium, before the Lasers impacted the floor, creating what looked like a disturbance on the side of a bubble.

He snapped his fingers, removing the Door from existence as another one snapped into existence below them. "Whoa!" Bruce steadied himself as they flew to the site of the impact.

"Voila!" He revealed the non-existent piece of Titanium and no hole in the floor.

"Y-You can disintegrate stuff?" Bruce subjected him to a look of pure terror mixed in with a pinch of fascination sprinkled in.

"What? No. Well, sorta. Look, it depends. If it were Vibranium? That laser wouldn't do shit to it. It all depends on the Material but my point stands, the walls of this place are very much impact resistant. Now, I don't want you to do this on your first try. I wish for you to better calm yourself and once you feel that you are ready, you can hit this space. It will be open anytime you want."

Bruce looked deep in thought as he looked all around the room, and said, "Okay. I can do that."

He clapped his hands in delight, "Great! Now, let me introduce you to the Guardian of this space."

"Guardian?"

"Yup. Let me present to you, Jin'Ya~!"

Jin'Ya, absolutely dramatic fucker that he was, sparked a deep violet light in the middle of the chamber that then escalated to turn into a giant dragon that touched the very very high ceilings, and looked down on them with its yellow eyes.

Bruce's breathing quickened as he had to flex his own CHI to create a small bubble around them that negated the effect of the Dragon's aura that Jin'ya chose to unravel at this point.

With a thought, the Laser door appeared once more and let loose a giant beam of red that stabbed through the head of the dragon, freezing the entire room at once.

After a moment, the entire thing unraveled, revealing a speck of bright purple that floated toward them and revealed itself to be Jin'Ya in his real form.

"Dr.Banner, please meet Jin'Ya, a dragon who has bound himself to the Red Hearth. He is essentially the second highest authority in this place, and please, do not worry, he is tiny and only eats stolen Barbecue meat."

_____xx_____

Earthen Bachelor Pad, Seattle

He sighed as he all but collapsed in his bed. All the talking with Bruce kinda tired him out, because to him, all that stuff was self explanatory, and combined with his intent to keep Bruce away from the mystical side for now, he had to repeat the same line over and over again, to try and redirect Bruce's boundless curiosity towards stuff that could be more easily explained by Science.

He had two more days left in Seattle before he was whisked off to LA, and Tony had three days until his weapons demonstration in Afghanistan.

BEEP!

His eyes snapped open, sleep all but vanishing from his system as he leaped to his computer, as it began glowing the same orange before the entire operating system switched to that of the computer in the Red Hearth.

He grinned as soon as he recognised the files appearing on the computer at a dizzying pace.

"Jackpot."

It was time to hit SHIELD again, and he was just looking for something to do for the next 24 hours before he had to start preparing for the move.


If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #34

Indian Ocean, 10000 ft above sea Level[January 21, 2008]

–Colin Baxter–

Cloaked in his stealth onesie, he looked straight down, hopefully straight at the lone ship that had no support vessels and no men guarding it. He knew that it was a trap and yet, he was curious.

Curious about what they intended to do with this ship. They might just be stupid enough to try and blow him up to kingdom come but something that Jin'Ya reported to him made him pause. The dragon was now so well versed in portals, that he opened one up right next to him and then used his vast mental prowess to do a basic scan of the place.

See, Jin'Ya absolutely detested, and he meant it by that word, detested going deep into the Astral Realm of the planet Earth because of how dirty and murky it was. According to Jin'Ya, most sentient species did not have as many dark emotions as humanity did and he did not fault him for that.

But Jin'Ya's powers were indispensable and pretty much a cornerstone of his operations so leaving him out of the missions was out of question. So, they came up with something that would allow Jin'Ya to exercise his basic powers without getting all that feedback.

The psionic mambo jumbo was beyond him at the moment but the gist of it was that Jin'ya would scan the identity sectors of a human mind, figuring out their self identity, and their rough location.

Jin'Ya, using the same technique, was telling him that there was only a single person on the ship. His name was Phil Coulson, Agent of SHIELD & lover of L.O.L.A. Amusingly, that is what the identity center of the person staying on that ship told Jin'Ya. The image of the red Corvette flashed through his mind and he had to admit, it was a sweet ride, especially now that it can fly as well.

"Alright, I'm going in," He informed Jin'Ya as he cut off the Air Door and plummeted straight down.

Even with all that noise, he still heard a grouchy voice speak to him ,"Fine. It's your funeral." Despite the prickly words, he smiled as he felt a thin layer of psionic energy cover him entirely. Well, it might look thin but he was certain that small layer would be able to tank anything that SHIELD might throw at him.

Who knows what those HYDRA infested sick fucks might do if they thought they had the orange Menace cornered.

He fell straight down, thousands of feet before he abruptly slammed down on an Air Door, making him wince at the point of impact. "Right, not that strong yet," He mumbled as he straightened up, his CHI doing the job as he slowly brought himself to the same level as the deck.

He had removed the cloaking aspect as soon as he had started plummeting so it was no surprise that Coulson was standing on the deck, with an umbrella in his hand, with that same calm, inviting smile on his face.

He also had another umbrella for him. Oh, how Coulson of him.

"Good evening, Mr.Orange," Coulson said as he slowly floated and dropped down on top of the Deck. With a snap of his fingers, a larger Door appeared above the ship, stopping the downpour of rain and with that, the annoying amount of ambient noise around them.

Coulson was looking straight up, at the shiny White Door that almost eclipsed the entire ship, "Huh. Neat powers."

He chuckled, his voice modulated by the orange onesie, it truly was a Jack of all trades, "You have no idea, Agent Coulson. You have no idea."

Coulson looked taken aback at that, "You seem well informed." Well, taken aback for Coulson was just a slight jerkiness in his movements and his breath stilling for a second before it all went back to normal.

"So, shall we?" Coulson gestured at the door of the deck, and he shrugged, "Sure."

With another snap of his fingers, the Doors above them shattered into motes of light. Let SHIELD think that he needed the gesture to truly operate his powers.

He stood in the elevator as Coulson punched the code and then pressed GO. Apparently, it only had one destination as they slowly went down.

"So, what brings one of SHIELD's best and brightest on this nondescript ship floating in International waters, all by himself?" He asked the question.

"When someone very powerful and evidently, very resourceful arrives on the scene, without any prior warning, SHIELD tends to take notice," Coulson explained to him as the elevator doors opened up, revealing a spick and span conference room setup to him. It looked terribly out of place along with the dark interiors along with the oil splotches all around the border of the conference room.

He chuckled, "I'm sorry, I must have missed you guys when I had to rescue Dr.Banner from a mad Dog. Speaking of which, how is Ross doing these days? Not bedridden, I hope?"

He plopped himself down into one of the chairs and watched as Coulson stopped mid motion as he was suddenly subjected to an intense stare, "That was you?"

"Come now, Coulson. You guys don't think that Ross, someone who almost certainly must have gone through periodic medical checkups, would spontaneously develop Stage 3 Cancer?"

Coulson sighed and leaned back, as if the mission was suddenly out of his weight class now, which it wasn't. Fury trusted Coulson the most, whatever counted as Trust from that man anyway.

"I will just…ignore that. I am obligated to ask you some questions, the answers of which I am sure I won't get."

"Ask away, Coulson. You would be surprised." He gestured for the man to go ahead with the litany of questions that were no doubt plaguing the analysts at SHIELD.

___xx___

Red Hearth, at the same time.

–Jin'Ya–

He munched on the popcorn as he lounged mid air, watching the whole thing with his psionic senses, and to his utter annoyance, had to project for the audience to watch as well. Bruce Banner, someone who was much less wary of him now, ate popcorn, but not nearly in a relaxing manner as he was watching the scene with him.

It was trivially easy to create a moving scenery of the place and then give it colour as well.

"Will he be fine? I mean, won't they just call in a missile strike and be done with it." Bruce asked him.

He rolled his eyes and flicked his tails mid air, "These ones are not nearly as stupid as the pile of turd that was chasing you around. Besides, even if they did try, they will fail."

"I see. I just wanted to know why Colin went ahead with the meeting if he knew that it was a trap and the target had probably been shifted somewhere else."

"It's because having a working relationship with SHIELD is much more beneficial at this point in time, Dr.Banner." Banner flinched as Colin's voice came from the screen. It was routine for him since the mental link with Colin Boy was two way and could be activated and shut down from either end. With the psionic practices he was having the boy go through, hijacking a mere psionic feed and then transmitting his thoughts through it was well within his current capabilities.

"As of now, there is no rival for SHIELD. They are an absolute behemoth and I would be a fool not to use them and their vast resources." Colin explained and then went silent as the Coulson man and Colin boy began talking about Bruce and the Hulk, especially how the world powers had become nervous when they could not find the single most powerful man on the planet.

Ha! Hulk wishes he was as powerful as the great and mighty Jin'Ya!

The agent in question was quite an amusing one as well. How does someone have the lover of a metal vehicle in their very identity center, the most rigid and unchanging part of their psyche?

Despite all their faults, of which there were many, humans certainly were far more interesting and amusing than his species.

Lover of cars, he almost cackled out loud at that, had it not been for young Bruce beside him who might get startled and start turning green.



If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #35

SHIELD Ship[January 21, 2008]

–Colin Baxter–

"I understand where you're coming from, Agent Coulson, I really do but the fact is that I will not be able to provide you with any way of contacting me, not without compromising my identity anyway," He shook his head and replied to Coulson, both of them now very comfortable with the flow of the conversation.

"I understand. I will relay that to the Director. If at all possible, can you tell us more about your powers? You have to understand that I need something here, otherwise SHIELD might just label you as a hostile entity."

He shrugged, "Sure. I can do this," He snapped his fingers, manifesting a small door in between both of them. Coulson leaned further at an angle, likely positioning the camera he had on person to better capture the Air Door.

"Then, I can also do this," He snapped his fingers once more, and a small gust of wind came out of the Door in all directions, making Coulson blink his eyes.

Coulson then deadpanned at him, "I assume that this is all a really small explanation about your powers?"

He nodded his head, "Yup. I am sure you know from my recent debacle with an illegal military unit in Canada that the Door can become much larger than it is now, and the winds coming out of it can also increase exponentially."

"I see. One last question, are you a Super Soldier affiliated with any known country?"

He instantly shook his head, "Nope. You think a politician would have been able to keep me hidden if they had my level of power in their hands? No, you guys would have known about me and the greedy fuck who would have undoubtedly used me to gain even more power."

"I suppose I will have to take your word for it. Ah, this is the last one. This is a direct notice from the Director. He–"

"Ah, what does old one eyed want from me? Tell me, how deep is the stick in Fury's ass?"

It was so awesome watching Coulson get bamboozled and then resigned as Fury was no doubt watching this whole thing live.

He made a show of perking up as Jin'Ya informed him of the orders that Coulson just received. To stall the Orange Menace until an armed unit reached the place, which was just 5 minutes away, according to Jin'Ya.

He slowly stood up, "I'm afraid we will have to cut our talk short. It's a shame also since I was really enjoying it. Anyway, I'll see you around, Coulson." He waved off the man's opposition and then used an Air Door on both of his feet and a small Door in front of his body to punch out of the ship's hull with ease.

He could not see anything in the distance, owing to the rain but according to Jin'Ya, there were multiple parties. Jets, a submarine and even a small destroyer on the way, all just to apprehend him.

"Jin'Ya, chances of showing our power safely?" For some reason, he really wanted to put them in their place without having to worry about a larger manhunt being deployed for him, that might one day lead to his civilian identity.

"High. But you are not asking about getting out safely out of this. You are asking about their response and it will be bad. The more encounters you have with SHIELD, the more you are risking your real identity." Jin'Ya replied accurately, and he slumped mid air as he realised JIn'Ya was right.

Short Term gratification was just not worth it when he wanted to make sure that Colin Baxter became a big enough name. "Fine, destroying really expensive military equipment later."

With yet another blast of air, the ocean parted beneath him as he rocketed up in the air. Now, he could hear the roar of the engine of the Jet. Sounds expensive.

Receiving mental directions from Jin'Ya, he let the Dragon do his thing and angle his body and the Doors just at the right angle. Understanding what the Dragon had planned, he couldn't help but ask nervously, "Are you sure?"

He had never gone that fast on his own before. His body could handle it but he always ran out of control before he could ever reach his full speed. To begin with, he had just now managed to get a somewhat working flight for him.

"Oh, stop being a baby. Just let me do my job." Jin'Ya chided as his body was finally angled just right. He counted over twenty doors on his body, all Air Doors, piloted directly by Jin'Ya. He had never been able to control so many. He tensed as the roar of the Jet came really close and the intensity of the air shockwave being generated in his Doors was getting dangerously close to tornado levels as the Jet was now within his sight.

"Jin'Ya? Any time now." He chuckled nervously and yet his body was lit up with excitement as a giant shockwave was emitted from his feet, instantly propelling him past the Jet. He could barely see the dull grey object he passed as his entire mind was unable to process what his eyes were barely seeing.

Soon enough, the cloak's enchantments gave out as Air began buffeting his face, forcing him to open yet another Door on his face, completely blacking his vision and trusting Jin'ya to do the right thing.

____xx____

–Phil Coulson–

He stood up, dazed from the impact as the entire ship was thrown away from its spot by a tornado.

"Coulson! Coulson, do you hear me?"

"Copy." He slurred out as he shook his head. He hit his head really hard at that.

"Stay there! Help is on the way."

He could do nothing else as he sat in the chair and collapsed on the table.

And it was going so well. Why did the Orange man have to mention the stick in Director Fury's ass? Everyone knew it was there, they just had the self preservation skills to never mention it.

With those thoughts, his head felt really heavy as he passed out on the table.

That was how the SHIELD strike team found him, passed out on the conference table with blood coming out of his head wound.

[24 hours later]

"Sir!"

"Sit down, Coulson." Director Fury remarked in an exhausted manner.

The office was silent for a beat before the Director leaned down and then threw a file in front of him.

He gingerly opened it and his eyes widened as soon as he read the first line.

"Mach 8?" He choked out, barely believing his eyes.

"Yes, our Orange Menace there can reach speeds that have only been seen by Rockets before."

He read through the rest of the report as it depicted the flight path taken by the object before it went straight up into the atmosphere and disappeared.

"Disappeared, sir?"

"We have no idea, Coulson. It passed through a bunch of clouds and then never emerged from the other side. The eggheads believe he engaged his stealth at that moment and fled the area."

He nodded, that made sense. "But if he could do that, why not do it in the beginning? Why give us this…show?"

"What else, Coulson? A show of power. It was a message."

He nodded slowly and didn't say anything else, "You are dismissed from this case. For now, we are now pausing all active investigations, only keeping a passive eye on him, from our systems. The analysts have reason to believe that he has a positive impression of you, so our only lead right now would be him approaching you."

_____xx____

Wakanda[January 22, 2008]

–Shuri Udaku–

"Got you!" She grinned as she found Colin, or rather, a lack of Colin on the entire planet. Her eyes roamed over thousands of lines of code as she overworked their deep space satellites, to scan the entire planet.

Wakandan satellites had already recognised that same energy burst and had just cataloged it automatically, waiting for someone like her to investigate it.

WIth her enhancements, she was now on a whole other level. Colin might have been a slightly less advanced peer before but now she was on a whole other level compared to him. The same energy burst was detected in the Canadian Wilderness, twice, where a mysterious Orange Person interrupted a Military operation, eventually getting away with the Hulk.

The same energy burst was detected in the Indian Ocean yesterday, leading to the most logical conclusion she could make, after compiling all the data and finding the same energy bursts all over Seattle, coinciding with Colin benign sighted in nearby areas.

Colin seemed to disappear from digital surveillance a beat before the energy burst and then reappear on the digital grid sometime after the energy burst.

"What secrets are you hiding, Colin Baxter?" She whispered to herself, grinning as she tasked the algorithm to record everything about Colin. Something about that guy was just so interesting to her.

With a slight twitch of her finger, all the data on the screen was masked and stored in an independent Vibranium lattice server that only she could access, as she turned around and waited 3 seconds for the door to start opening.

A member of the Dora Milaje bowed at her, "My Princess, the Council has called for you."

Her eyes twitched as she remembered that she had been the one to call the emergency meeting. She snorted at the powerplay. Well, they could cling on to such pathetic power plays while she obtained real power and made connections with people who had even greater power if the data she had on Colin was any indication.

"Tell them I'll be there soon."

The Dora Milaje visibly hesitated, "M-My Princess–"

She turned around in her seat, "Leave."

"Yes, My Princess."

As soon as the Doors were closed, she exploded into action. If things went right, today was the day she was finally going to start taking the first steps to make Wakanda Great Again.


If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #36

Wakanda[January 22, 2008]

–Shuri Udaku–

Spoofing the reading for her personal single-person jet, she ordered it to leave Wakanda airspace and wait for her. In the meantime, she looked at the large red warning flashing on the screen, with her finger hovering above the Yes sign.

It was a huge step, there was no coming back after this. It was all her weapons research, hidden and public that will be deleted from Wakanda's databases, the ones that most of Wakanda had no idea about. It also had data about the serum she made and ingested.

She still remembered the experience. She was suspended in the best possible nutrient solution she had made, figuring that anything could be better than being buried in the soil. She had never really expected to wake up right in front of a very irate Bast, who was annoyed that she had not taken the traditional route.

Somehow, in that moment, she forgot that she was talking with a Goddess and had ended up arguing with her Patron God for who knows how long about how traditions can be discarded in favour of newer ever changing traditions, the usual ones she had with her Baba before she found out about his actions.

In the end, Bast agreed to her becoming the Black Panther, in exchange for a single guarantee. The utter destruction of the serum, if there was any left, and all the data in it. She made her vow it, which she found was somehow binding. According to Bast, the serum made her vastly stronger than a normal Black Panther but also gave her something extra.

That extra was upto her to figure out but honestly, even these powers were more than enough. She had done some preliminary testing and so far, she was ten times as strong as T'Challa and even impervious to low calibre bullets, with the sting being negligible.

She did not have time for more testing as she sighed and pressed her finger on the screen, the action more symbolic as she could have just as easily given the order with a twitch of her finger since the motion sensors in her personal Lab were the most sensitive.

She turned around, her white lab coat shredding as she donned her most recent advanced nanite uniform, glittering in blue and purple as she incorporated every single piece of advanced tech she could, all in hopes that T'Challa would be safe but for now, it worked very well for her as well.

The doors slid open as she approached it, not even breaking stride as she saw the same Dora Milaje, looking conflicted, waiting for her. She sneered, as expected of the senile old people, and with a single hop, traversed the entire hallway, with a mixed use of her suit as well as her powers.

"My Princess!" She ignored the Dora Milaje as she arrived at the Throne Room in record time. She dismissed the HUD as her face mask slid off, revealing her face to the two Guards at the Door who lowered their spears after seeing her face. One of them went inside to announce her arrival and the other one looked at her with barely disguised awe and wariness.

"The King will see you now." The other guard announced and she took a deep breath, steel her her nerves and walked into the room, head held high as she maintained eye contact with King T'Chaka, who eyed her with the same wariness as he did the J'abari a scant few years ago.

"Dear Council of Wakanda, I am sure you have already heard my orders, as an emissary of Bast. If you wish for me to repeat it in a more formal setting, then –"

"There is no need for that, Princess Shuri. We have already heeded the orders of Bast's chosen. The purpose of this meeting is something we are still unaware of. If we can proceed with that, instead of digging up past actions, that will be better." The River Tribe Leader stated and she agreed with that.

She nodded, "Very well. As I am sure you all know, I have now become Bast's chosen, a second Black Panther, while my brother has already received Bast's blessing. This is unprecedented and I believe, a sign for the tumultuous future to come. To make sure that Wakanda comes out on top from the uncertain future, I wish to leave Wakanda to prepare."

Murmurs and whispers broke out from the council as she looked at the now bickering elders. They knew they had no power over her and the only one whose advice she might listen to was the one person she had no respect for anymore. So, this was more or less just a formality, to inform them that she was leaving and they could not do anything about it.

"Silence!" Eventually, it all became too much as the King waved at the Dora Milaje to bang their spears on the ground, silencing the entire Council.

"Princess Shuri, we have heard your request and grant it to you. Please, go ahead and fulfill Bast's wishes. This nation thanks you for that."

She nodded and left with an emotionless face, not caring one bit about bidding farewell to her father. The way he had handled the entire conversation with her and his refusal to stop the program had grated on her.

The doors opened and she rounded to the corner and lazily raised an arm, to stop a punch from her dear brother, T'Challa. Lightly shoving him back, she watched as he jumped a rather long distance to offset the force behind her light shove. She really needed some combat training to get her powers under control but this was her brother, he would be fine with a light shove.

"Whoa! That was….You've become really strong. Stronger than me, how?" T'Challa asked as he began walking alongside her. She was on her way to the lab, to give some last minute instructions to the faculty at the Royal Lab for the maintenance of some of the national security stuff that she handled on her own.

She side eyed T'Challa and smugly replied, "It's because I am better than you. Simple as that."

"Oof, you hurt me, Shuri. Now, I know you have to leave and I know you won't tell me, neither will Baba but before leaving, why not one last spar with your brother? You know you have always wanted to bash my face in when I won every single time."

She grit her teeth and glared at him, making him narrow his eyes. "Whoa, my instincts are screaming at me, Shuri. Well, shall we?"

She wordlessly complied though, she might have shoved him lightly, once or twice.

—-

She stood, victorious, as her brother laid, absolutely exhausted, his entire body bruised from her punches. Rolling her eyes, she walked over to her brother, and nudged him with her leg as he groaned in pain. She was glad that there was no audience for this fight, otherwise her brother's prestige would have plummeted by now.

He was famous for being undefeated, even without the Black Panther's enhancements.

"So, how does defeat taste?"

"Terrible." T'Challa glared at her as she lifted him up effortlessly.

At Least she figured out how to pull her punches in this fight.

T'Challa panted as he looked at her, "Do you really have to leave?"

The smile left her face as she looked over the horizon, into the giant forest that greeted her eyes from the personal sparring ring of the Black Panther, "Yeah. I have to. I need some space from Wakanda and also I have some really important stuff to do and some really important people to meet in the outside world."

"More important than family?"

"More important for Wakanda's safety."

"Ah, can't beat that excuse now. Well, Stay safe, and don't hesitate to call me, okay?" T'Challa hugged her and she did so as well, a little bit harder than usual.

"Ah, Shuri, you're suffocating me." T'Challa made fun of her and in return, received a push that deposited him right on the pillar.

"Bye!" She waved her hand as the Black Panther suit assembled around her, shredding all her existing clothing, save for her underwear, as she jumped off the ledge and flew straight up, the thrusters in the suit making sure that she rocketed straight up, releasing a sonic boom in the process.

Oh, how she loved Vibranium. Enough energy to power entire cities, all in the size of a peanut.

The shield around Wakanda flickered as she passed through the small section that was deactivated on her arrival, and continued to rocket up, in stealth mode, until she reached High Earth orbit and turned around to see the blue rock she was from.

Shaking her head, she set the target to Seattle as her suit's repulsors kicked in, surpassing Mach 4 in speed.

She had a Materials Science class to take and a super powered teenager even stronger than her to meet. A feed opened up, showing Colin's last known sighting to be in his apartment building.

Time for a second meeting.

___xx___

Earthen Bachelor Pad, Seattle

–Colin Baxter–

He was in the middle of choosing whether to take his secondary enchanted clothes to LA or leave them in the Sanctum since they were just a backup Orange onesie just in case he damaged the original enchantment when a shiver ran down his spine.

It felt like he had been locked on to by something or someone and they were coming for him.

"Jin'Ya?" He shouted mentally, hoping that it was just a fluke and not his instincts acting up.


If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #37

Earthen Bachelor Pad, Seattle [January 22, 2008]

–Colin Baxter–

Looking all around, he closed his eyes and tried to see if anything was around him but after finding nothing, he shrugged and went back to packing. He had about 4 hours till his flight and in typical fashion, he procrastinated packing until the last moment so here he was, a literal magician who had multiple housekeeping spells under his belt, standing in the middle of a clothing pile, unable to decide what to keep and what to throw back into the closet.

Sighing, he collapsed on the bed. He did not care anymore.

He might just buy some when he lands in LA. It's not like he is short on money anymore. Plus, he did not have much of the business formal that was undoubtedly needed for the internship and buying them in LA would be a much better decision.

With that, yet another round of procrastination done, he slumped back on the bed and closed his eyes, playing an incredibly dangerous game of taking a 15 minute nap before he had to leave for the Airport.

……

……

"Colin Boy,"

His eyes snapped open at the graveness in Jin'Ya's voice, snapping upright in an instant as his gaze flickered all around him, the CHI in his body ready to erupt into violence at any moment in time. "What is it?"

Instead of answering, Jin'Ya projected a feed for him, showing the globe with a single red dot flying through the sky, heading straight for him?

"Whatever it is, it has a mind of its own and has the blessing of Bast. The mental shields on this one are much better than what I saw in the Princess earlier. I can't break them without having Astral contact with them. Be careful."

Jin'Ya's warning clear in his mind, he carefully began packing everything up to head out, just in case whoever this was, ended up targeting him. He would not want his apartment to be trashed because while he kept most of his collector's stuff in the Red Hearth, he still kept some in Seattle to keep up appearances.

—

He had almost cleared out his apartment, cleaned everything up, threw anything that had gone bad in the fridge, ate anything that wasn't too far gone, and was just in the process of putting plastic sheets on the furniture when he perked up, the sound of a window opening and closing made him perk up and look in the direction of the now vacated apartment.

Normally, he would not keep his senses peeled so far because, after a certain point in time, the noise became too much, especially when he wanted to relax in his apartment. But since he was already warned by his personal early attack alarm system, Jin'Ya, he kept his senses at the maximum possible setting without cycling enough CHI to light up his apartment, and voila!

The apartment next door, used by Shuri, was opened by someone. The weird thing was that he heard the windows and the doors opening and closing but no footsteps, no breathing, nothing. As if a Ghost was…

His eyes widened in alarm as he immediately closed down the blinds and cycled his CHI, preparing for an attack.

GHOST!

SHIELD's operative which was also infiltrated by HYDRA. She could phase through material and might just be able to kill him, even with his CHI.

"Shit!" He muttered as he mentally called on Jin'Ya, who told him that he was ready with a portal right above Seattle.

"Oh, wait, Colin!"

"What?!" He snapped, the tension of both, having his one real identity exposed and his life being in threat from a very dangerous yet somewhat innocent agent stressing him out.

"That is not the Ghost. It is Shuri."

He relaxed on the spot, CHI disappearing from his system as the molten orange glow on his body began dying down. "Really?"

"Yes, I was unable to sense it when she was up in the air but now that she is much closer, I can see that she is in some sort of nanite suit, wow, that was advanced stuff for you humans, and is cleaning the apartment."

What? His face morphed in confusion. Why would…

He shook his head as he began packing and finishing up the rest of his tasks. He had no time for this and whatever it was, it could wait until after he was done with his internship. This was going to be his first foray into the corporate world and he could not wait for the industry to chew him and spit him out, just so he could create his own and spit back on them.

Wow, Colin, what a marvelous strategy!

He mimicked gracefully accepting an award and waving at the countless people who were giving him a standing ovation because of his pretend humility in saving the planet, not by his powers but by his acts as a businessman.

He shook his head. Enough shenanigans.

With a wave of his hand, the enchantments on his main computer are dispelled as he had already taken the SSD out of it, and put it in his laptop, which already had the necessary enchantments to piggyback off of the giant planetary shield that Kamar Taj maintained to access the network server in Kamar Taj. It would be slow but it was much better than nothing.

If anything else happened, Jin'Ya was there, with his interplanetary psionic range.

Taking one last look at the now properly cleaned and covered apartment, he switched off the lights, took the suitcases out of the apartment, and left the building, conscious of the gaze that was on him all the way until he left the block.

He shook his head. Women..

___xx___

Afghanistan [Same Time]

–Tony Stark–

He stayed in the most luxurious Military accommodation in Afghanistan, which was not much beyond simple bedding and a closed cramped room, thankfully, with its own bathroom. It was small mercies that he was a billionaire weapons dealer and not a soldier. He couldn't even imagine how the soldiers lived.

He could have stayed in a much more spacious and luxurious setting in another base but that was 6 hours away from the demonstration site and he did not want the hassle as well as the security risks that came with extra stopping points.

He was in enough danger as is.

For some reason, the thought of the 'Unnamed' hacker came to mind. To be mindful of his weapons and continue tracking them. He had been so carefree and caught up in his own world that he didn't even know that Stark Industries had such a policy.

To track every single piece of ordinance they sold to any client on the planet. With the US military's budget being what it is, most of their stuff went to Uncle Sam anyway so the policy was followed in a manner of speaking but the more he looked, the more discrepancies he found.

First off, the fact that it took Obi about a week to just get him access to the list was odd enough but the entries in the list were even more confusing. According to the entries, they were only manufacturing and selling about 70% of their production capabilities. He knew, for a fact, that Stark Industries had to pay penalties multiple times because they were behind on schedule on multiple pieces of weaponry that he now found out were not even running at full capacity.

The fact that they were running at full tilt and the supply was just being diverted elsewhere never even crossed his mind as he lay down on the relatively comfortable bed, thinking of where his life was going and how a single conversation with a globally renowned Cyber Criminal had forced him to take a closer look at his company, his legacy.

"Tony? Tony?" He got up and opened the door as Rhodey was knocking on it.

"Rhodes! How you doing, my man?"

For now, he wanted to get this demonstration out of the way, secure billions more, and then go back to take a deeper dive into what Stark Industries was doing behind his back. He could not skirt responsibility anymore.

…….

…….

Unfortunately, Tony was too late as forces were already moving in the shadows to take care of the Billionaire mogul before he could disturb the status quo too much.


If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #38

LA [January 23, 2008]

–Colin Baxter–

His eyes fluttered open as he rose from the bed, very slowly and smoothly. It was something that he had noticed happening, ever since he permanently opened the CHI gate in his very soul. His body was constantly flooded by relatively tiny amounts of CHI that not just strengthen it but do a lot more than that. His sleep schedule, for example, was getting changed bit by bit.

He slept less and less as months went by and even the sleep he did need was of such low quality that he woke up even due to the noise of the curtains hitting the glass due to the wind from the AC or something, such was his light sleep.

It was not really a problem but he had some doubts about long term sustainability about being essentially devoid of sleep at all times. It had gotten to the point that he had already consulted the Ancient One about it and she had recommended following normal sleep patterns unless it comes to the point of him not needing to sleep for weeks on end.

Then, he might have to construct a fully soundless chamber somewhere in the Red hearth, just to get a good night's sleep.

Getting off the very comfortable bed, he walked onto the balcony and looked at the rising sun, with people and cars already honking below on the road. He was on the seventh story of the hotel the people at Stark Industries had put him in. He had arrived late last night and had done nothing except eat, look at a new web series he'd found, and went to sleep.

In the meantime, Jin'Ya, knowing that Tony Stark was about to get the awakening of a lifetime, had made his nest in Kamar Taj, a space reserved for the grumpy dragon, designed to house him for longer periods of time. The dragon was responsible for keeping an eye on the genius playboy billionaire philanthropist, and informing him if something untoward happened to one of the smartest humans on the planet.

He hoped that nothing drastic would happen in this timeline but who knows? He couldn't really predict anything because the one place where he found an anomaly, Wakanda, was the one place that was shielded from Jin'Ya's gaze, both because of Bast's protection and also because of the planetary supernatural treaty that the Ancient One made Jin'Ya sign.

It was a Wednesday, the middle of the week, and he had nothing to do for the day, a transitional period, his handler said. He had to report to Stark Industries, or more accurately, someone from Stark Industries would come pick him up tomorrow to give him his orientation.

He had read testimonies from previous interns that the Dean handed to him once his internship offer was confirmed, and according to them, the gig was kind of awesome. They did not give any important work to any intern, which was obvious, but the work given was also not expected to be completed on time.

Essentially, each and every one of the 29 interns that came from his University to Stark Industries to intern told the Dean the same thing. It was a very nice and rewarding experience. The corporate atmosphere was one of the best and it was the gold standard for work life balance, according to the Dean who told him explicitly that he could even continue his freelance work and continue doing open source projects even if they conflicted with some of Stark Industries' projects, as long as he himself was not working directly on them, which was very reasonable.

He stretched, and after checking the time, grinned and jumped into the bathroom for a quick shower, because his body simply did not generate the same amount of sweat and grime as normal people so his body did not need regular cleansing, not that he did not still regularly bathe.

Some people might be into that but he was a clean freak by a wide margin, a problem exacerbated by his enhanced senses that allow him to see much better than normal people.

Whistling, he changed into a T-shirt and shorts, since today was his day to roam the city and not meet people in stuffy business formal attire, and went down to the ground floor.

He had a free breakfast buffet to demolish, to eat all the calories he might need for the rest of the day.

____xx____

–Shuri Udaku–

She sat in a cafe in a better part of the town, one of the American places where everything was very overpriced but it was only because you paid not just for the food but for the time spent in a very well maintained and expensive place. In her case, she was sitting in a booth with enough privacy for her to work on her laptop without any peeping toms nearby.

"Thank you," She smiled at the waitress and went back to reading the reports on her laptop. They were SHIELD reports, on the so-called Orange Menace, and what reports they were.

Enhanced strength, durability, and speed. Ability to turn invisible. Flight, Strange Door manifestation, that were bulletproof and could be manipulated remotely.

Multiple projections of the same Door could be used, just like he used to create that makeshift ship that he flew around, at speeds rivaling the fastest jet she had made for the Royal Air Force, back in Wakanda.

Sipping her coffee, she swiped her hands on the trackpad and saw the UI change completely, now resembling the systems she had back in her personal lab, showing a single red dot, along with a real time feed showing Colin Baxter, stuffing food in his mouth as if it was his last meal on the planet, in the breakfast buffet of the hotel he was staying at.

She had followed Colin to LA last night, mainly because she was very much interested in him and also because she had no friends back in Seattle and her only acquaintance was, strangely, the guy who was hiding from the rest of the world by throwing a smoke screen in the form of an up and coming genius programmer.

She really did not know how to approach this whole situation. On one hand, she did not know the kind of person Colin really was and haphazardly approaching someone who had the potential to seriously hurt her, even after her enhancements was not wise. She could not just approach him and tell him that "Hey! I know your secret. I would also like to be your friend."

Ewww. Cringe.

She finished the last of her coffee as she swiped the UI as it went back to the general state of work happening back in Wakanda on projects she marked as priority before she left, chief among them being a way to efficiently and safely disseminate viable cures to the rest of the world in a phased manner.

She had a lot of work and if by some misfortune, the past record of her country was ever revealed to someone like Colin? Then she could only pray to Bast because she had gone through the SHIELD reports on the conservative estimates on both the Hulks' as well as Colin's powers and they did not paint a pretty picture in her opinion.

An alert on the screen brought her attention back to reality as she pressed a button on the table that would alert the server to come to her table. She was in the mood for some classic American fries and cheeseburger. Now that she had essentially an always on calorie consumption machine in her body, she could eat anything and everything she could ever eat and never have to worry about her figure because her body needed so much more energy to sustain itself now that she had injected herself with the extracted and refined juices from 11 Heart Shaped Herbs, something that was supposed to be a suicide according to Bast but somehow she survived as if the universe itself made an exception for her.


If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #39

Kamar Taj[January 23, 2008]

–Jin'Ya The Venerable "Self Imposed" Psionic Dragon–

His one eye cracked open as he imposed some well deserved Draconic pressure on his surroundings, snickering as the weaker humans that were practicing near his dwelling skittered away. It was always fun to do that to humans. Most humans couldn't even explain the sudden sense of fear, it was just something the lizard part of their brain told them.

They were in the presence of an apex predator and should leave the vicinity immediately. Opening his eyes fully, he stretched and yawned, in the privacy of his chamber, on the edge of Kamar Taj. He grumbled once more as he had to be particularly forceful with his aura as a human couple was on the verge of mating near his dwelling, which was hidden from the vast majority of people here at Kamar Taj.

He will never understand the urges of humans. Mating while under threat? Somehow, they went at it even harder when they were scared.

Shaking his head, he controlled the urge to look deeper into what were obvious mental and soul aberrations of the humans and instead focused on his two surveillance targets on the planet and the third surveillance target in the Red Hearth.

With a flex of his will, a portal manifested in front of him as his awareness spread through the portal into the Red Hearth and located Banner, who was currently making himself coffee while going through the phone given to him after all tracking had been removed obviously. The man was much more stable than he was when he was on the run and barely surviving with suicidal thoughts. He knew, on an Astral Level, that the sheer weight of Banner's soul would stop him from dying in a mere mortal manner. For someone of that stature, they were destined to die in a blaze of glory, lighting up the Astral Realm as their soul withered into nothingness.

He didn't even know if his soul could be consumed by even the oldest of soul eating monsters deep in the Astral Realm. The strongest Psionic Dragons he knew, and he would know, he was one of them, weren't even that much stronger than him and as he was now, he wouldn't dare touch Banner's soul.

That single fact raised Banner's worth a ton for him and Colin because just in case he was unable to defend Colin from his own species who will come for him once they realise how juicy and ever nourishing a soul he was hiding from them, Banner's soul will act as a great deterrent due to his proximity in the material universe.

Finally all stretched out, he hummed in satisfaction as his dwelling and its surroundings were now all void of animals or distractions. He scoffed at the pair of humans who were running away, barely clothed. Even non sentient animals had the intelligence to realise something was obviously wrong and flee the area but humans? Somehow, their brains, which helped them become the apex species of their planet, stop working whenever they are in the presence of a sufficiently attractive human.

A major evolutionary flaw, something he was sure would be stomped out by the boot that was evolution soon enough.

He then followed the psionic threat he had latched onto Stark's mind and winced as he saw the man's condition. The man himself was unconscious, completely out of it but diving into the minds of the people nearby gave him a pretty good idea as to how his surgery was going.

Doctor Ho Yinsen was obviously trying his best but with limited tools and even more scarce patience from his captors, the best he could do was a stop gap measure, nothing more than that. The man himself was once again a cesspool of negative emotions slapped with a single positive hope being able to help someone escape the prison he was in.

That was the only thing the Doctor had going for him and that was sad. Ofcourse, sadness of this calibre and even beyond was commonplace on the planet. Coupling that with human's tendency to mate at rates Dragons couldn't even fathom without any regard for planning whatsoever made Earth's Astral realm such a dirty place that he hadn't dipped his senses too deep into it for the entirety of his stay on Earth in this new body.

This body was more than capable of handling his full psionic output, even if only for a few minutes but he had been "advised" to not do that by the Ancient One and her backers because that would simply break the Astral Realm of this planet. Souls of his strength were not supposed to be in the same vicinity as normal human souls because that would just set off a genocide of the whole species, outright breaking one of the commandments of their race that every member had to agree to before they travelled throughout the universe.

As strong as he was, breaking the commandment would have some pretty severe consequences, even for someone of his strength.

Satisfied that the man would not die and the people keeping them captive have seen value in keeping Tony Stark alive for longer, he severed that connection and moved onto the always active mental link between him and Colin.

Colin, he was an odd soul. It was clear that the soul had been touched by something other, something out of this reality. Something that got him his bullshit powers and allowed him to become someone who might one day have a hand in changing the entire galaxy or even the universe if some of the ravings of the older Psionic Dragons were to be believed.

……..

He snorted as he sensed the same divine shielded mind in LA as he did back in Seattle. Apparently, Princess Shuri of Wakanda had arrived in LA as well. He couldn't read her mind but he sure knew how humans worked at this point, at least most of the time. Sometimes, these hairless apes barely make sense with how they revert to their baser instincts but in this case, he knew that Shuri was following Colin, who had no idea that he was in the same city as someone whose soul had gotten a lot stronger than it was just a few days ago.

Ah, this was going to be fun, especially if he didn't warn Colin. She doesn't seem to want to harm Colin and even if she did want to, Colin was much stronger than her, based on her soul strength.

Considering it payback for forcing him to live on Earth where he was constrained, psionically, magically and mentally, just to monitor a single person. Granted, TOny Stark was supposed to be the uber saviour of the human race, according to Colin but he was unsure based on previous actions of the Merchant of Death.

"Tony Stark is in the exact same conditions you thought he would be. No deviations, yet." He relayed mentally as he borrowed Colin's senses and found him getting ready to enter the human workforce, in a very shielded manner.

Honestly, why Colin goes about, pretending to have to work to live was beyond him. Even if he did want absurd amounts of money, there were plenty of ways to go about doing that. Instead, someone who was stronger than most of humanity chose to hide in plain sight, peddling his brain for some money, and then after earning more than enough money, went on to get a "job".

"Fine. Keep me informed if there are any changes and you know what to do if his life is in any danger."

He shook his head at the foolishness of wasting so much time on stuff he thought useless as he mentally conveyed his understanding before cutting off the mental link.

He snorted in amusement as he watched Banner look at the kitchen in shock and awe as dozens of kilograms of meat were brought in through a portal and dumped into his dwelling.

It floated in front of him as he lazily floated down to the ground and stamped his paw on the ground, lighting up the ritual circle on the ground that began automatically roasting his breakfast.

Sure, it wasn't Ta-Lo meat but it was in huge quantities, so it made up for its deficiency in taste, somewhat.



If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #40

Stark Industries HQ[January 23, 2008]

–Colin Baxter–

He calmly waited in the pantry area, with 5 other interns, all of whom were notable names even at their age. They were supposed to mingle using this time but what the hell were the HR people thinking, putting a bunch of chronically online socially awkward teenagers in a room to socialise on their own accord?

If it is not a requirement, most of these nerds wouldn't even step out of their dorms. Still, it would be nice to network with people who would understand his work and then he would finally have someone in his life who would appreciate the blood, sweat, and–okay, he didn't work that hard but still, it counted for something.

"Hi, I am Colin Baxter." He offered his hand to the closest person in the vicinity who was an Asian teenager with thick glasses. He was really not doing the stereotypes any favour here, with hair slick back, bulky glasses, and an overall lanky build. Come to think of it, out of all the 6 of them, he was the most bulked out and he wouldn't even call himself a bulky dude, just a lean muscled guy.

Not that he could even gain bulky muscle because, apparently, CHI decides the optimal use for muscles and with the way his muscles were nourished with CHI, the more strength he gains, the denser his muscle fibres become instead of just becoming bigger, so, no becoming a professional bodybuilder to explain his strength since he would just becoming heavier as his strength increased.

"Hi. I am Jack Slash." The man eagerly shook his hand as he began making small talk with him. Something to pass the time at least since it was clear that this was one of the metrics they would use later on to review the internship applicants. Social skills were pretty important, after all.

After a while, the topic rounded back to tech, since they did not have much in common. He tried asking Jack about gym, exercise, and even Badminton since that was the one sport he played very well, and for all of these questions, the answer was in negative so he pivoted to things he knew everyone in the room had an interest in, nerdy shit.

"Oh yeah, I read both of your papers on the IP stuff. You have some really great ideas–"

"Yeah, but they will remain ideas, until the world plays catch up with networking hardware. With the industry being monopolised, there is very little chance we can see any funding come your way for the next generation of efficiency in the Internet. It's a shame, I'm sure it would have brought down basically everything in terms of cost, at least in the long run but we all know that the executives calling the shots at publicly traded corporations rarely if ever think that long term." He turned slightly to see an African-American man approach him.

Wow, was he tall, taller than even him, "Hi. I'm James Bourbon."

"Hi. I'm Colin Baxter."

"Yes, I am aware. I follow your work regularly. You have remarkable determination to have 3 things going on all at once in your life. Your academia, your freelance work, and even this open source project. I would love to chat over some of your more experimental ideas that require a Quantum Processor to perform the calculations needed for a global bus that every single device can ride on."

He smiled and nodded, "Yeah, sure. I would love to get another opinion on it. Between us, I don't think I will see that happening anytime soon. Not just because every university and company that has a Quantum Computer has flat out denied me their use but also because it will turn a single place into a target, centralising most of the communications on the planet into a single control unit, which while supremely efficient secure, would ultimately fail at the human error test."

James nodded, "I wholeheartedly agree. Technology is neither good nor evil, it's the humans that make use of it. In that case, whoever, the risk of it being used for evil is so high that it is better not to make it at all."

He nodded, and then turned to the door as someone from the Orientation team had finally come.

"Alright, people, let's get you your badges."

—-

He yawned in boredom as the HR guy explained the security principles to them for the second time. Did he not know one of the people here was actually hired by one of the three letter government agencies to do something highly illegal on their behalf? Probably not.

After that, somehow it was time for the lunch break as they were herded to a cordoned off area with a small buffet arranged for the six of them and their Orientation mentor. As he ate the no doubt tasty and good quality food, his mind drifted to what was happening here.

He was beginning to have some doubts about this whole endeavour but he couldn't back out, not now anyway. Might as well just go through the two months and then decide if doing this is worth it or not.

_____xx_____

Red Hearth

–Bruce Banner–

He was in comfortable gym clothing as he lifted the handle with more and more weights until it finally became too much for him and stopped. Looking at the weight on the machine, it showed a staggering 300 pounds of weight being lifted from the small handle coming from the ground.

He stepped back and wiped off his sweat as he realised that he didn't even feel that bad. This was not supposed to be possible. Not only did he not have the required muscle mass to lift something that heavy, he also did not have the training to do it properly and regular practice for his muscles to get them used to lifting so heavy.

Jin'Ya, the resident dragon, had told him that he was going to stay on Earth for an important mission and would only check in from time to time. His method of checking in was odd as well because all he saw was a bunch of meat products being airlifted from the kitchen and into a portal that led to who knows where on Earth.

For the time being, he was all alone on the Red Hearth and while it was nice to have a safe environment, where he knew Ross would never be able to reach, it was also kind of lonely. He started playing online games on the absolutely stacked out machines that Colin had in this place but even that got old after just a couple of hours of playing.

There was just too much profanity in that space for him to properly enjoy it as a beginner.

That was why he was here, in the gym, to workout because, intellectually, he knew that exercise was the best legal antidepressant there is. Granted, Colin could probably get him all sorts of pills but he wanted to at least try doing it the hard way.

As it turned out, he was different now. Not just as Hulk but even as plain old Bruce, he was much stronger than he should be.

The machine on the ground was the perfect test. It has a very uncomfortable lifting position, with a single handle coming out of the ground, which was very short and barely fit both of his hands on it, and to lift the handle with all his might.

The machine would progressively increase the load and in the end, give you a figure on how much weight he lifted. Never in his life has he ever done strength training. No weightlifting, nothing.

The best he had done before this was cardio and even the majority of that was running, on treadmills and away from the military.

Sighing, he wiped the meagre sweat and moved on to the next machine. The next time he met Colin, he'd need to see about getting some medical stuff as well because he absolutely had to study his own body now.

He did notice the fact that he was vastly more resistant to cold as he trekked through the snowy Canadian wilderness but having a vastly stronger body that could potentially grow stronger?

That was a game changer, for the right as well as the wrong reasons.

The inner scientist in him would not stop until he was at the root of his mutation, and now that he had a safe space to pace himself, he could finally do the thing he was best at.

SCIENCE!

And not SMASH!



If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #41

Stark Industries HQ[January 28, 2008]

–Colin Baxter–

Colin sighed and collapsed on the bed as soon as the door closed to his hotel room. He only had the weekend left in this hotel room before he was moved to the official Stark Industries housing, which was just a series of residential buildings made exclusively for use by Stark Industries' employees or guests and whatnot.

The accommodations were more than generous enough but for some reason, he did not feel like moving to the official residence. It was….vexing.

He had thought that this would be one of the first few steps he could take to learn more about the things happening inside a company that might help him better but he was just realising that his entire school of thinking was flawed.

Stark Industries was an old company, like pre-WWII company and while it did only grow exponentially in the past couple of decades, that root, that history allowed it to create a stable foundation, a sense of trust that was very important, perhaps even more so than the product, for a publicly traded company to thrive.

He did not want that, not in this form anyway.

"Argh," He groaned into the pillow as the choices became too many and his thoughts became jumbled. He couldn't even ask Jin'Ya for advice because the Dragon had no frame of reference for this. Jin'Ya thought that it was all just a giant waste of time. He couldn't fault the dragon for lack of trying as he had combed through the memories of multiple people on the Wall Street and in the end had come to the same conclusion as he did.

It was all f*cking pointless, at least to some degree.

He sighed and turned around, facing the ceiling now, already missing his own personal artwork on the ceiling that was most definitely going to deplete his deposit given to the landlord as the cost of repairing that was substantial.

He closed his eyes and despite not wanting to, he cycled CHI in his body. He was not really tired per se but he really needed the mental clarity that could only come with happy chemicals in his brain, something that always happened whenever he cycled CHI in his body. It never really got old, the rush of happiness that was accompanied with literal life force flowing in his body.

It could become a dangerous dependency but he made sure to have weeks between each session, just in case, to monitor his mental state during that time and he had Jin'Ya in his corner, the de-facto Astral expert on Earth. According to Jin'Ya, substance abuse is as mental as it is physical and as such, shows up in their Astral Form and can be detected by Jin'Ya with ease.

So far, he was clean.

He jerked a bit as he heard a knock in his mind, for the lack of a better term. Knowing who it was since JIn'Ya never bothers knocking, he opened the link and greeted Dr.Banner.

"What can I do for you, Dr.Banner?"

"Ah, Colin, I was just reaching out to ask about the shipment."

He sighed once more as he got up and trudged towards his personal laptop, "Just a second, I'll check."

Waving his finger over the laptop's body, he activated the enchantments on it, connecting to the invisible network in Kamar Taj using the planetary shield as a global wireless network.

"Uh, Bad news, Dr.Banner. The shipment's being delayed by a week because of some customs issue. It should be here in the first week of Feb, according to the latest update from the supplier."

"..Oh…Okay. Just let me know when it's here. I have a lot of ideas just sitting around."

He winced as he sensed the hope dwindle from the man's voice. His finger twitched as the enchantments faded away, returning his laptop to the normal mode as he spoke through the link, "Speaking of which, how goes the setting in? I know you have started exercising and made some exciting new discoveries."

He smiled as the excitement came roaring back. Scientists, a very easy bunch.

—-

"Thank you," He took the absolutely massive order of 5 Hamburgers, 2 Cheeseburgers, 2 cokes, 3 Large fries and a Lava Cake from the room service guy, who was subtly trying to look into his room to see who was going to eat this food. Smiling politely at the guy, he shut the door before any inquiries could be made.

After all, it was clobberin' time!

….Clobbering the food, that is.

___xx____

–Shuri Udaku–

"How many times do I have to tell you that I will come back once I want to," She explained patiently to T'Challa, even as she continued working on stuff that she would never want to see the light of day. Having Bast's blessings enhanced more than just her body. Her brain was shooting off ideas every which way and she needed to write them down, or else, her brain refused to settle down.

"I know, I heard you the last three times but come on! Baba is depressed and nobody knows why. It has been almost a week since you left and things have changed so much. At Least tell me what happened between you and Baba," She sighed and dispelled the holokeyboard after hearing the pleading in T'Challa's voice.

Looking at him, she paused a beat before replying, "Look, you'll know once you become King but for now, let's just say that I disagreed with one of Wakanda's long-standing policies and Baba did not agree with my request to put a stop with that practice."

T'Challa looked at her with an incredulous gaze, "W-What? You went ahead and became the strongest Black Panther Wakanda has ever had, just because you had a disagreement with Baba?"

She snapped at him, "It was not JUST a disagreement. It was physically revolting to think that Wakanda–" She stopped, took a deep breath, and said with a stoic face, "If you want to know more, just become King as soon as you can. Then you can order me for all the information you might need."

T'Challa, seeing that his transparent attempt at goading her was seen right through, chuckled nervously and replied, "Even I know that the Black Panther is not beholden to the King or even the Royal Council, should the King and the Black Panther not be the same individual."

She rolled her eyes and waved her hand, shutting down the video feed. She did not need the law recited to her verbatim. She memorised that thing when she was six and had nothing else left to read.

____xx_____

–Tony Stark—

His eyes snapped open as he took in deep breaths and then slowly turned to the side, looking at Yinsen, the man who saved his life, the man who didn't even remember meeting, "How long this time?"

Yinsen looked at his watch and then began scribbling on a small notebook that his captors gave them. Apparently, guns and missiles were aplenty in this place but ask for a pen and notebook, these guys had none of it so they had to ration fucking paper of all things in this god forsaken hell hole.

"4 hours 23 minutes and 17 seconds." Yinsen replied and he cursed. That was too much. Removing the tapes attached to some of the wires, he sat upright from the bed and held the battery in one hand and began hobbling towards the workspace created for him. It was a very generous term, to name it as a workspace when it was just a bunch of tables attached together.

"Come on, Yinsen, we have work to do. Who knows how long they'll keep me alive once they know I have to go under every day with a real possibility of never waking up." He bitterly remarked as he began working on the newly arrived Jericho missiles, his mind working as he tried to come up with a better plan than just making an exosuit and blowing this whole place up.

He did not have enough time, materials or even hands for two whole suits and it put an ugly feeling in his heart to explore an option where only he lived.

"Don't lose heart, Stark. You still have a lot to gain if you manage to get out of here. After all, you have nothing, so this is rock bottom and I don't know much about American culture but I do believe they say from this point onwards, it's only up, right?"

He chuckled at Yinsen's relentless hope and his deep speeches that somehow all hit dead centre and made him look back on his life and how he had basically squandered most of it, not making any connections, meaningful connections in his life.

It was all….so sad.

Shaking his head, he dumped the battery keeping him alive on the desk and watched it ominously move due to the weight imbalance, "SAve for the speeches for later on, Yinsen, preferably over a glass of ridiculously overpriced Wine and the best steak money can buy."

Yinsen adjusted his glasses as he looked over all of the plans they made to appease their armed overlords for the moment, "Ah, that is a nice scenario to imagine."


If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #41

Stark Industries Accomodations[February 3, 2008]

–Colin Baxter–

"Nooooo!"

He took it back, this internship was awesome! He laughed in triumph as he finally won, in chess. Yup, it was currently 2 in the morning, and he was in the lobby of their accommodation and was playing chess with one of his fellow interns.

Leaning back into the chair, he looked around him and saw similarly enthused forms playing board games of various sizes and shapes, scattered throughout the lobby attached to them. The layout of the building was unique as well.

It had seven floors with each floor having 10 rooms, for 10 people. Then the floor also had an independent washer/dryer unit, a small gym, the aforementioned lobby stocked with all the games one could need, along with a room carved into the side of the building that had the Theatre room.

All of this in a single floor. The entire lobby was sound treated as well, hence, the lack of restraint on their part in screaming, either in triumph or in despair.

"Yield before my might," He said in a deep voice before turning to the side as his phone pinged with an alert. Without breaking stride, he turned to Jack Slash and smiled apologetically, "Sorry, I have to take this. I'll bring the next round!"

That set off another round of WOOOO in this lobby. See, everything in the building itself was free, it was another form of consumer paradise, but one had to actually go down to the reception to get it. Everything was open 24/7 but the people were very lazy to actually go down and fetch the drinks.

Non-alcoholic mind you.

The madlads maintaining this building had freshly squeezed juice available at all times of the day, so all the people got whatever fruit juice they wanted at any time of the day. There was food but that was time limited. They COULD however tell the reception to order anything from any 24/7 food chain and get it for free, at any time of the day.

Living here was becoming more and more attractive by the day.

Weaving between the tables, he got out of the lobby as his smile dimmed, looking at the alert on the phone. His fingers twitched as he cast the enchantments on the phone as well as on the glasses he had begun wearing when he came for the internship, making the entire UI switch on the phone.

For the dozens of cameras littering this lobby, it would show usual stuff but for him, it was a personal alert from his system that had dozens upon dozens of targets that were being searched for, on the internet. He smiled as he read the target this time, and after checking on the location of a sub-target, switched off the phone and went into the elevator.

His systems found AIM or atleast the organisation that was peddling around discount pyromaniacs and looking for any investors to get the project off the ground.

The elevator dinged and he smiled at the receptionist before moving to the pantry, which was also accessible 24/7. Taking the stuff he needed and putting it in a basket, he scanned it at the self checkout and put his thumb for ownership so the system knows that he took out the drinks, for record keeping purposes since there was no billing involved whatsoever.

Smiling at the receptionist once more, he got into the elevator as his mind churned with what to do with AIM, or Aldrich Killian who was trying to perfect the Extremis Super Soldier serum.

Now, there was no way in hell that he was going to inject his previous body with that trash, even if it was somehow perfected because his powers were more than enough to make him strong but it wouldn't hurt to have Bruce take a look at it.

He finally had a super genius on his side, might as well take advantage of it. Jin'Ya was currently on an Astral Talk with one of his buddies in the Astral Realm, whilst also keeping an eye on Tony so he did not want to disturb Jin'Ya just to talk to Banner right now but once the data was done, in a day or so, he might contact Banner to get a look at whatever samples he might recover.

He put on his normal face and went into the lobby that was still abuzz with activity as it was Saturday night and none of the people here were inclined to go to a club. Actually, this was their club, in a sense and he would have been more than happy to just go on for the entire night but he had some stuff to do, meetings to crash, serums to steal, scientists to kidnap, all that jazz.

That is why once he set down the drinks on the table near the door, he turned to Jack who was busy on his phone, probably waiting for him, and said, "Hey, I gotta turn in for the night. I need to meet someone tomorrow morning, early morning."

Jack nodded, "Yeah, sure. Good Game." He bumped firsts with the guy and waved at all the other guys as he left.

"Bye, Colin!" They all did it in the sing-song voice of a class greeting the teacher in the first lecture of an absolutely cold morning, which was hilarious, in his opinion.

Turning around, he went into his room and turned on the laptop after activating the same enchantments, resulting in the server from Kamar Taj opening on his laptop. He read through the first few reports to see that SHIELD has been keeping an eye on the Advanced Idea Mechanics Think tank because they suspect them of trying to create advanced weaponry under the guise of medical technology along with a case of some fraudulent investors.

Money coming in from Zurich, spent on very overpriced equipment coming in from China, hiring foreign faceless workers from Vietnam for rates surpassing that of European scientists. Yup, that'll do it, that will put anyone on the radar of SHIELD if the company in question was dealing with stuff that could be easily used to make biochemical weapons.

He knew that Killian was dealing in more than just a dirty bio weapon but SHIELD probably thought that they were dealing with their average run of the mill terrorist group who would eventually lose their patience and slip up, not knowing that the potential slip up would be a spectacular explosion that would wipe out any evidence of wrongdoing.

No, SHIELD was taking the hands off approach because they couldn't really swoop in and essentially destroy a US company without due cause and just in case they couldn't find anything incriminating in the company, the World Security Council (and their donors) would surely get on Fury's case and that was probably the last thing he wanted, what with his planet already being full due to a certain orange menace stealing his secure data.

He shook his head and shut down the laptop. They had a meeting scheduled in Lagos in an hour, where they were going to showcase their first ever successful specimen, and the language was carefully worded as well, showing no sign that it was actually a person.

SHIELD was going to be there but only in a nominal capacity, for some reason. It was as if they were a globe spanning agency that couldn't afford to send in the cavalry for every single lead, without knowing if it was worth it or not.

After all, why would anyone at SHIELD think that someone with barely a billion dollars in total funding over 5 years could make anything close to the super soldier serum when entire countries spending dozens of times that in a single year couldn;t even create something close to the original Super Soldier Serum?

Maya Hansen really was a genius in her own right. He didn't know what he would do to her because her knowledge was really dangerous and giving her to SHIELD was not an option.

He got ready, arranging his room and putting on his sling ring because he had to be there right now. He only knew a single location in Lagos for the portal and the location for the meeting was in a parking lot of a commercial building that was shut down for construction for the moment.

Putting on his orange one sie which was just a small patch of fabric when unfolded, he was about to open a portal but froze as his phone rang. His phone never rang. No, it buzzed or pinged at most with a short sound. Never this hideous ringing sound.

Taking it out of his pocket, his eyes widened as he saw "APOSTLE OF BAST" as the caller ID.

In the medium sized bedroom, which was now totally dark, a single word echoed, single handedly encompassing the situation Colin was about to find himself in, "Shit…."


If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #43

Stark Industries Accomodations[February 3, 2008]

–Colin Baxter–

He tried to wrack his brain as to who this Apostle could be, maybe the Black Panther? But then again, if Wakanda wanted an audience with him, they would never use subtlety, they would just bulldoze through.

He couldn't even try to track the hack because he was in such a hurry and who knows who might get the Extremis serum if even a single vial slipped through the meeting. Jin'Ya could not accurately ferret out information from individuals from the world without lunging his soul deep into the Astral Realm, something he was neither inclined to do nor was he allowed to do.

So, with a heavy heart, he swiped the animation and accepted the call. "Hello?"

He was surprised to hear a feminine voice come out of the phone's speakers, "Hello, Mr.Colin Baxter, or should I call you the Orange Menace?"

A chill ran down his spine as he looked around and activated his gaze enchantment, cursing mentally as he found a single gaze on him, probably of the same person who was calling him. He had a clue who this person was but no clue how they found out about him. Well, since the cat was out of the bag and Wakanda was the one place he need not fear because he knew so much stuff about them that putting them in the ground would barely be an inconvenience for him.

"Shuri?"

"......"

"I suppose you hacked my phone and my systems? Using your fancy Vibranium servers?" It was a gamble he was willing to take, to be in a position of strength since he was flying in pretty much bling here.

"You know far more than you should, Colin Baxter." He smiled and was about to reply but stopped as he felt something arrive on top of the accommodation. It was damn near silent but even Vibranium could not silence the tiny disturbances in the air, which he felt because he had his senses peeled ever since he got the phone call. Damn Wakandans.

He was in a hurry and they had to contact him at the same time...

"Are you right above my room right now?" He asked, incredulously as he tried to sense the shape of the ship they were in. There was a good chance that it was Shuri but she could not be alone, being Princess of Wakanda and all that jazz, so he was playing it safe here.

"Yes," Was all he heard before the CHI in his body spiked a bit as something small and light hit the balcony, right in front of his door. Tensing, he waited for the door to open, already summoning his most devastating Doors in both his hands, a Fire door, and the Kinetic laser Door.

Yes, both were energy based attacks and could work poorly against Vibranium but they would raise enough of a ruckus that Wakanda would be forced to hide and he would call in Jin'Ya to get him out of here. THe fire could be explained later on, that was not the scope here.

The lock clicked open and the door swung open, revealing nothing? No, something was there, it was just invisible. Pointing his right palm at the door that was crackling with red energy, he said in a deathly whisper, "Quietly come in, I am sure you don't want Wakanda's secrets to be sent to a select group of people who can and will come for your Vibranium, right? Princess Shuri?"

There was a moment of silence before he sensed the figure come in and close the door. A moment later, the invisibility was dispelled, revealing a sleek suit with purple lights coming through the crevices. His eyes narrowed as he recognised the suit to be the one Shuri used, in the future.

His question was answered when the helmet part of the suit just receded, revealing Shure's face and also the fact that she was using Nanotechnology right now, which meant that her tech was much more advanced than it was in canon.

There was a moment of silence between them, where both of them spent a second observing each other before he broke the silence, "So, what can I do for you, Your highness?"

Shuri snorted as the rest of her suit flickered for a moment before changing into normal clothing. Walking towards the couch, she sat on it and looked at the opposite couch, gesturing for him to sit too. Rolling his eyes, he dispelled the crackling red energy in his palm and sat down on the sofa right next to her, keeping his senses cranked to 11 just in case this was an ambush.

Shuri eyed his palm which was now not glowing red, "Neat trick. I wonder how many more of those you can pull out of nowhere?"

He didn't deign that with an answer as he asked, once more, "What do you want, Princess Shuri? I doubt this is just a social call."

Shuri shook her head as a small hologram was projected in front of him. "I was curious, that's all. The one on the left is the energy reading taken from two different isolated incidents, and the third one is the most recent one, taken from this room just a scant few minutes ago. Notice anything familiar?"

He cursed as he realised that SHuri could somehow track the orange onesie whenever it was activated. The density of the enchantments on the thing rivalled most Relics in Kamar Taj and that was probably what Shuri's sensors picked up on. This was…game changing. He had to warn the others at Kamar Taj because if Shuri could sense his use, she could also interfere in other operations that Kamar Taj had around the world.

He ground out, "Yes. What of it?"

The displays were dismissed as Shuri said, "Nothing. I was just curious."

He blinked at her, "Just curious?"

She nodded repeatedly, "Yup. So, where are you off to? The last two times you donned that suit, you did some pretty interesting stuff. Illegal stuff but interesting nonetheless."

He looked at her oddly, "You want to come?"

"Oh yeah, most definitely. Why else would I come into your room in the middle of the night?"

He exhaled and then stood up. "Fine, if you want to do this. But only you, none of your security can come."

"What security? I came here alone."

"And you thought that it was a good idea? You know how strong I am," He remarked as he donned his suit, which expanded instantly to cover his entire body, top to bottom, as he psyched himself up not to embarrass himself during the hardest part of any operation.

The portal opening.

"Wow, is that nano tech? I sense no Vibranium so how did you solve the Quantum interference? Also, the energy coming from it ebbs and flows, what's up with that?" He mechanically turned to the side, to see Shuri with her head buried in a screen, mumbling questions, either to herself or to him.

"Can you not?" He deadpanned at her who waved her hand at him to shut up.

"You do know I have a deadline, right? There are some dangerous people I have to capture today and the only reason I am even allowi–"

"Excuse ME?! Allow me?"

He blinked at the sudden outraged expression on her face. He sensed that he made a mistake of some sort but he didn't know at the time he was digging himself an even bigger hole, "Yeah, your suit. I assume it's Vibranium? That should be more than enough to protect you from most things so you should be saaafeeee–"

He raised his forearm to block the dropkick as he skidded backward, toppling over the sofa and backflipping to land back on his legs to see Shuri standing in the same spot with her leg outstretched in his direction.

"Okay, first of all, cheap shot. Second of all, I didn't mean it that way." He tried to defend himself, keyword being tried as the next moment a flying Shuri came his way with her leg aimed at his chest. He had to redirect her at the last moment by grabbing her leg and flinging her back to the sofa.

He DID NOT want to explain a hole in the wall to the admin team here. That would be embarrassing on all levels.

"Would you stop?" he asked, exasperated as Shuri stood up, smirking. She looked at him expectantly for some reason, as the suit reappeared on her, sealing her up to her neck.

He sighed, "Fine. You don't need protection. Princess Shuri is more than capable of defending herself. I was wrong, I apologize. Now, can we go?" He bowed mockingly at her and asked her pointedly.



If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #44

Stark Industries Accomodations[February 3, 2008]

–Colin Baxter–

Waving his arms a bunch of times mid air, he was thankful that the portal opened on the third try, showing clouds on the other side. A nifty enchantment on the sling ring allows the caster to decide if air and water could come out of the other side, given that the pressure did not exceed a certain limit. It was not like he could open a portal to the bottom of the ocean and then keep the pressure at bay.

He would be vaporised by water of that pressure if he ever tried that, as was evident in the Sling Ring Warnings book distributed to everyone who ever got a sling ring. They had to memorise it, else, they were not given authorisation to use the Sling Network and without the network, using the Sling Ring required far more finesse and power.

"Hmm, what is your power source? A single person having such a diverse range of abilities is not something we have ever witnessed. Curious. Truly curious." Shuri murmured as he rolled his eyes and jumped into the portal, landing on an Air Door while Shuri floated through leisurely, propelled by the two boosters on her feet. He was curious about the suit but now was not the time for that.

Why did he bring her, an absolute stranger, to a mission he would deem critical? Who knows but Jin'Ya was not here to lecture him so he counted that as a win.

"Lagos? Why are we in Lagos?" Shuri asked him as she experimentally placed one foot on the Air Door, which was keeping him floating in the air.

"Well, many reasons but the main one is that I have been tracking someone who is scheduled to have an important sale here in Lagos in about an hour. So, if you could just follow my lead," He said his piece before letting the Air Door dispel, dropping him from tens of thousands of feet in the air.

He swiftly angled his body so that he was cutting through the air, heading straight down. They were not exactly above Lagos, just a little bit off the coast and last he checked, the radar systems were not exactly top notch so he was fine and Ms.Wakanda over there was in a state of the art suit that probably had all sorts of stealth mode in it.

"What is the plan?" he looked to the side as Shuri was flying down with him. Somehow, her words reached him perfectly, despite all the air between them. ANother Wakandan tech then.

He sighed and took out a USB from his pocket and presented it to her. She swiftly took it as it immediately melded in her suit. OKay, that was cool.

A moment later, as he used controlled air bursts to slow him down for an impending splash, he heard her scream, "Super Soldiers? Controlled Super Soldiers?"

Gently floating on top of the ocean with the Air Door, he looked at Shuri who was now standing on the door, going through the data docket he had compiled about AIM. Most of it was just information that SHIELD and the other law enforcement agencies had compiled and some of it was just him connecting the dots using his meta knowledge.

"They are here to sell a Super Soldier Serum?" Shuri asked him as the Door began moving in the direction of Lagos.

"Yup. I don't know if it is working or not but I can't take that risk now, can I?"

"So, what's the plan? Are you going to turn them into SHIELD? Confiscate the research and then hand them over to–"

"Hand them over?" He deadpanned at her as they dove underwater, courtesy of another three Air Doors appearing all around them. ONce they were at a sufficient depth, the Doors propelled him forward. Turning to Shuri who was looking at him with an odd expression, "To answer your question, No. I am not going to hand them over to any government related entity who will just make them restart their work, with government level resources this time."

Turning to the burner phone he kept handy, he saw that the parking lot where they were about to have their meeting was actually across the city. SIghing, he turned to Shuri who had gone quiet at his declaration, "I assume you have a decent Stealth mode built into your suit?"

"Once we surface, follow my energy signature. The location is on the other side of the city. Alright?"

Shuri nodded, "Sure. Are you going to kill all of them?"

He sighed, "I do not know, actually. I do know that I can't let them be free. I know that some of the people there did not work willingly. Some of them are just people down on their luck. Once I'm done with the ringleader, I'll have to evaluate the situation on a case by case basis."

"This Killian guy? Does he pose a threat to you?"

"Me, personally? Nope. But the world does not need a renewed super Soldier Arms race and I, for one, would like to live in a world that was not in a constant state of emergency."

"Makes sense," Shuri said as he activated the stealth function of his suit and shot out of the water. He couldn't see her but he could faintly sense the air disturbance behind him. She then slowly disappeared from his senses the higher they got, due to the air speed.

Within minutes, he landed on top of the building that was sealed off for maintenance work. He felt the light impact beside him as Shuri spoke, "I've scanned the place. There is no one in all the three underground parking lots."

"Well, you're the one with the more advanced tech here. Cast a wider net then." He suggested before walking over to the edge of the helipad, looking at the city which was bustling. THe sun shone brightly above them as he looked at the crowd moving around the city, not knowing that at any moment now, someone was going to bring in a walking human bomb capable of reaching temperatures high enough to melt steel.

"So what's your plan? A mass purge of everyone involved? That would be the best way to minimise any risk of fallout as well as thoroughly destroy the research." Shuri commented lightly as a hologram appeared in front of him, showing a program that was looking for Killian, Maya Hansen, and a couple of other lieutenants of AIM through every single camera in Lagos, of which there were plenty.

"Well, the top management has to go. I know Hansen is only working to get her research done. She did not find anyone else willing to fund her research. Killian is in it for both revenge as well as his broken body. The other three Doctors with him are utterly ruthless, they have to go."

"Uh-huh. So the Doctor lives, the person with the most value lives while the rest die. What about the clients?"

"Once I have ID on them, I'll see what kind of scum they are and get rid of them as well."

"I see. Do tell me why I should let you get away with Hansen. For all I know, you could be doing all this so you could build yourself an army of Super Soldiers. After all, I don't really know you that well, Colin, to trust you with something so world changing." Shuri said in a tense voice as she positioned herself facing him.

He smiled, uncaring of her threatening position, "Shuri Udaku, daughter of T'Chaka, brother of T'Challa, daughter of Queen Ramonda, genius extraordinaire, and now, Bast's chosen as well."

He turned to look at her who had now donned her entire suit, covering her entire body, the holo displays dispelled completely, "I do not care for your motives and if you think I am here to profit from people who can, at best, be called traitors to the Human race but do know this, if you even think of interfering with my work, I will not be kind, to you or Wakanda. So, please, think your next words carefully."

Turning back to the city at large, he expanded his senses and almost winced at the amount of feedback. Shuri was right though, the parking lots as well as the entire building was completely empty, which was odd. No construction work, no squatters, nothing.

He felt more than heard Shuri coming to stand by his side, "I apologise if I came off judgemental. I know that with my country's track record, I have no right to lecture you. Now, this is your operation and I did just come here as a tag along at the last moment. Please, ignore me and continue."

"Uh-huh." he said as he mentally wished that Jin'ya was present. Sure, her thoughts were walled out by Bast but having backup would have been much more preferable to having someone who might turn on him at any moment.

Why did he agree for her to come with him, again?

Oh yeah, she figured out his identity and he panicked at the spot.

There was a beeping sound before a holo display appeared in front of him, showing both Aldritch Killian and Maya Hansen, spotted by a traffic camera, in a car headed their way.

"Show time."

If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #45

Lagos, Nigeria[February 3, 2008]

–Colin Baxter–

"I've hacked into the car as well as all the devices in it. Accessing Location history on the phones. We have audio but they are not speaking at the moment. The driver is local and they don't have any security personnel with them." Shuri informed him while he kept an eye on the surroundings.

"Makes sense. They wouldn't want to draw any more attention to this. Any leads on the possible clientele?" He asked as he paced on the rooftop, watching Shuri do her magic as screens paced past her display at a dizzying pace, only visible to him because he was a literal superhuman at this point.

"Not yet. There have been a number of arrivals, through both legal as well as illegal routes of foreign individuals with a high net worth but they are far too many to go through individually, and at this point, I have 60 of them on the move, with about two dozen of them coming in this direction."

He muttered, "Right. This is the shopping district." Then, he stopped pacing and asked Shuri, "What about the building? It is in a prime location and they have somehow kept it sealed off without any ongoing work. Look for the owner."

"Already done. It is a building owned by a number of companies, all tracing back to multiple shell companies, eventually leading to a holding in the Caribbean. That's as far as the trail goes. I can find the owner but it will take time and it might alert them." Shuri shrugged.

He sighed in frustration and nearly snapped at her, "Aren't you supposed to have data like this stored somewhere already? I thought you guys ran surveillance on the entire world."

Shuri deadpanned at him, "We don't go around looking for every tax dodging individual, and who they are. If we did that, we would run out of people. That is not important for Wakanda."

He sheepishly muttered, "Right." Why would Wakanda care about outside tax laws, tax dodging, and tax criminals?

"Well then, it would seem there is nothing we can do but wait." He muttered as he reached through the mental link and hit a wall. He cursed internally. The wall was flimsy and he could break through at a moment's notice but that was not the point. Jin'Ya had warned him that unless there was a genuine emergency, he wished to be with the person whom he was meeting.

Jin'Ya would have been a great help here because doing targeted mental searches was within reach of Jin'Ya without contaminating his soul, but alas, the Dragon was on a date and it rarely happened so he was not about to disturb the man for something he could accomplish on his own.

Doubly so now that he has some sense of a backup with him, even if he could not really trust her 100%. He hoped that Shuri, grown up and exposed to the ugliness of the world, would have a much more mature worldview and would know that sometimes, there are no good or bad choices, only things that are necessary. Killian had to die. There was no way he could imprison Killian indefinitely. The man knew way too much about Extremis.

Maya was another thing entirely. Her goal was different from Killian's. It would be way easier to just give her whatever money and equipment she needed, and a lab on the Red Hearth, where she would be suitably isolated from the world, sparing her from certain death, something he would no doubt be bringing up during their inevitable encounter.

The reports in SHIELD also indicated a substantial security crew along with three other scientists who worked with Maya. The others were probably moles for their respective investors and knew just as much as Maya. Now, damage was already done because the data on Extremis, however incomplete and faulty it might be, was already out there but so was the data on dozens of other failed programs.

The baseline data was gone but that was not important for now. Now, he needed to deal with all the scientists and take the person who has the best chance at making Extremis a reality, out of the game altogether. He was sure that if Maya was given the chance to work on her serum without any requirement to weaponize it, in exchange for getting to live, she would take it.

"What's this?" He looked back as Shuri seemed to have found something. Noticing his gaze, she did something that changed the holidisplay. His eyes widened as he saw the structure of the building they were standing on. The feed showed the building structure, the 3 basement parking lots and beneath that was a thick concrete floor and after that were another two floors full of movement.

"What the hell?" He asked as he took a closer look and saw what seemed like dozens of people moving about in a giant enclosed space.

"The city has no records about that space. I am unable to find any activity on the grid that would suggest a large operation. No wind currents, no parking history, no coordinated security or supplies transportation. Nothing." Shuri rattled off as a feed showed Killian and Maya being just minutes away from the building.

His brows furrowed as he saw them enter through one of the back exits and go straight down, to the last basement parking. "Come on, let's go," He said as he turned invisible and jumped off the building, controlling his descent using his Air Doors. In the beginning, the impact of something small abruptly digging into his body was painful but now it was negligible.

"What's the plan?" He heard through the small comms that Shuri gave him since they needed to maintain silence and Shuri could speak from inside the suit and he could speak from inside the skull mask to maintain complete silence.

"We need to get inside the floor. I can spoof the motion sensors as well, can you?"

"I am not getting any signal inside the building. I am trying to trace the data paths of the entire island through the internet exchange centre nearby. Once I am in, I can do pretty much anything we need. It looks like a closed loop facility and with how many people are in the space, most of it must be automated." Shuri informed him as they manoeuvred through the empty spaces and began descending into the empty parking lots.

Both of them landed without any noise as the car dropped them and left the parking lot, leaving just Killian and Hansen standing alone in the parking lot.

Both of them seemed anxious but Maya seemed more so, plus Killian was the only one who had a gun on him.

"Should we take them right now?" Shuri asked him and it was a valid question. It was a great opportunity to extract the Doctor from the situation and kill Aldrich and be done with it.

But… "No, we need to know what's in the facility as well."

"I thought so. The fibre traces should be done in a few minutes. I have confirmed no wireless operations for the facility so the connection must be coming from somewhere and it is a lot harder to track fiber data connections than it is to track electricity." Shuri explained to him even as he kept an eye on the criminal duo.

They were just standing there, looking around, waiting for someone or something to happen.

"Any movements from the floors? Can you do a deeper scan? See if there is any entry/exit point. They must be coming and going from somewhere."

"None. Actually. It is all just a thick concrete box below us. No discernible entry points. Wait! We have cars incoming." Shuri said and just after a minute or so, the sound of tires screeching echoed throughout the building as multiple blacked out SUVs came rolling in. HIs eyes widened as dozens of armed people exited the cars and gestured for Aldrich and Maya to enter the cars. They complied and he and Shuri were left watching as the parking lot was empty once more.

"Shit!" He cursed as he slowly floated behind them. He would have to come back later on to figure out what this giant underground space was but for now, Extremis was the priority. It had the potential to do much more damage, especially once the procedure was disseminated to the rest of the world.

They didn't even have to work, to have super soldiers. No, even the defective ones in canon, that created what were essentially suicide bombers. Even those would fetch a pretty penny on the market because it was potential for super soldiers and in the meantime, they got undetected suicide bombs, a wet dream for terrorist organisations.


If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #46

Lagos, Nigeria[February 3, 2008]

–Colin Baxter–

They were hot in pursuit. Actually, scratch that, they were floating at a very leisurely pace right above the cars, both in stealth mode, because the cars were now stuck in traffic.

"Being able to fly really does help chasing someone down in the outside world, doesn't it?" Shuri commented over the comms as they both tracked the small convoy of vehicles that were taking Killian and Hansen somewhere.

"I wouldn't know, I have never really been to Wakanda before." He commented, realizing that Shuri was just fishing for more information.

And as expected, she zeroed in on that piece immediately, "Really? You sure know a lot about Wakanda without ever being present inside the do– inside our country."

He rolled his eyes at that, she couldn't have been more obvious if she tried, "My sources are none of your business, and yes, I do know a lot about your country because I make it a business of knowing about people and countries that could become a threat to me or the world."

"Hey! What did we do?" Shuri's voice got quieter towards the end and he was sure she must have felt his deadpan when he said, in the driest voice possible, "Really? You wanna know what your country has been doing to the rest of the world–hell, I'll need most of the day to describe what you guys did or didn't do to the African continent itself, let alone the rest of the world."

Oops. He might have gotten a little too passionate there but then again, it has always grated on him how a country with massive advantages, natural, technological, and even geographical was so passive, so content with being the backstage, to be a background power.

In a way, they were fortunate that not a single king from Wakanda had expansionist policies, or else, at a minimum, they would have had control over the African continent but that also meant that no single King looked at the outside world, looking at the science that no doubt proved that everyone was human, sans the color, and help the world from tragedies.

No, they were fine hunkering down, building cures and comfort technology for themselves, and remaining isolated.

After a long 10 seconds, Shuri replied, in a subdued tone, "I guess you are right. We have been pretty lax, and that must change, and it will change." Her voice rose in fervor as she continued. "I will make sure it changes."

She seemed to have come to a decision, a major decision for her but he had no desire to meddle in that so he just settled with warning her. "Just don't do anything stupid. Otherwise, I might just have to burst that barrier open to contain the chaos."

"Wait, What? You can do that? Break our barrier? How?"

He kept an eye on the car which had now stopped at a signal, "Well, it's nothing too exciting. See, your barrier was made to mimic the properties of refined vibranium as much as possible, right?"

"As disturbing as it is to hear an outsider be so cavalier about our technology, yes, It was made with that goal in mind," Shuri said in a contemplative voice. Yes, fall into my trap. Spend your days trying to find how information leaked out of Wakanda while he relied on his meta knowledge since he hadn't actually been to Wakanda ever. He planned to change that soon enough, though.

He was sure that an exchange visit, to either the Red Hearth or even Ta-Lo would be more than enough for Shuri to facilitate a Wakandan visit for him. Well, it all depends on how this conversation goes.

Coming back to the topic at hand, of breaking the shield around Wakanda, he replied, "That makes it really simple because Vibranium can actually absorb most energies in ridiculous quantities but there is a single type of energy that can't really be stored by Vibranium. Once it encounters that energy, its properties begin breaking down."

"What? What is that energy? We have tested 113 different Vibranium alloys with all the energy types we have available on Earth, even some of the more esoteric ones that are classified, and not once has Vibranium faltered." Shuri countered with fierceness as if he was proving her personal research wrong.

Well, he was certain she had never used the type of energy he had access to.

CHI.

Yup, CHI was the one type of energy that could be used to break down or at least temporarily disable Vibranium's ability to endlessly absorb energy in all forms. Somehow, CHI, as in pure life energy, at least the one that he had access to, could overwhelm Vibranium in its energy storage capacity.

The Ancient One has a theory about Vibranium being Celestial Flesh and CHI doing something to the long dormant flesh but that is just a theory that cannot be proven unless somehow in the near future, he meets Arishem and establishes a friendly rapport with the Deadly Celestial.

CHI was the answer to breaking down Wakanda's barriers but he was not about to tell that to Shuri. It would just stop one of his entry points, not that he couldn't do that same with his portals but Shuri had now seen the portals and he was not about to underestimate the genius of someone who, if given enough time, would have been able to transfer an actual sentient consciousness, who was vastly more complex than normal humans (VISION), into a digital format.

So, he scoffed at her, "Please. How stupid do you think I am? Why would I tell you something like that?"

The car had traveled just 5 miles in the time they had been talking, courtesy of peak city traffic but it looked like they were starting to gain speed because the cars were now moving out of the city.

"Name your price. Wakanda has a lot of stuff that will interest you."

Hmm. That was interesting but he was not going to agree to an offer like that so soon. Let the BLACK PANTHER of Wakanda jack up the offer more so once he got to Wakanda, no one will be able to question it because the word of the Black Panther, more often than not, held the same weight as the word of the King.

"We'll see."

He still didn't have the faintest clue as to why and how Shuri became the Black Panther so he asked. "How did you become Bast's chosen anyway? I thought your brother had already ingested the Heart Shaped Herb."

His offhand comment raised his innate danger sense as he felt Shuri about to do something to attack him but soon, that feeling went away. Externally, he remained the same, floating ahead at a leisurely pace, while internally, he was ready to blast her and her vibranium suit to pieces if she really tried to attack him with some bullshit ray that broke down his magic.

That would really suck.

Fortunately, it would seem that Shuri had more sense than he expected her to and she calmed down.

Shuri sighed over the comms, "You do realise that each and every word of that sentence was information pertaining to Wakanda's national security and the official protocol for dealing with individuals in possession of such information is death?"

He shrugged and grinned, even though he knew Shuri would not be able to see him, "Like you dealt with Everett Ross from the CIA?"

"Okay, Who are You? Do you live in Wakanda? Do you have some bug installed in my Father's office?" Shuri's deepening confusion only served to amuse him more.

"No." he just delivered the answer and her muted frustrated groan was music to his ears.

In the meantime, the cars had sped up, officially exiting the city and heading towards the woods. Figures. Yet another hidden shady base somewhere.

"Remind me why we aren't just taking the two of them and forcing them to reveal their clients. These guys don't look like they've had any training, they should fold pretty easily, especially the girl." Shuri commented and he had to remind himself that Shuri probably had military training, even if it was somewhat muted due to the fact that she was the darling Princess of Wakanda.

But the Military training sometimes shone through her naivety and kindness.

As for her question, "Well, I am all but certain that Killian doesn't have the faintest clue as to who their client is. They are literally gambling with their lives here and if that is happening, I am sure that it is not about just money. Killian could have acquired it from anywhere. Coming all the way here, especially without any security, just to meet someone? It doesn't make sense."

"So, you think that their client has something they want, but it's not money. Something to help with their serum then?

"Precisely."


If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #47

Lagos, Nigeria[February 3, 2008]

–Colin Baxter–

After a while, the cars slowed down, well, they had to because they were now wading through thick forests, trudging along slowly on a dirt path that was very well hidden or atleast not used enough for it to show up anywhere online.

"Anything on your scanners?" He asked Shuri as they were still floating right above the cars, the foliage acting as a natural screen for them but even so, the cars were visible partially to him. He was sure that no normal human would have been able to keep track of them just with their vision. THey both would have lost the cars had they not had supernatural vision and in SHuri's case, thermal cameras.

"Nothing yet but I am only scanning the areas around the cars and the trail," Shuri informed him as they both waited for the cars to reach their final destination. It was just so irritating to have to wait for normal people to get on with their criminal activities so he could come in and bust them, especially since he did not have to deal with pesky things like IC engines and challenging geography.

Both of them were still in stealth mode and he was starting to get really tired of this. He had half a mind to just give up on the chase and snatch those two out because—

"Wait! I found something." Shuri informed him as he felt her form float up and up, something he reciprocated as he raised his levels as well, which was risky because his form of flight used controlled air bursts, something that can be detected by sensitive enough sensors.

"What?" He asked as he kept an eye on the cars that seemed to be slowing down but that could be because of the bad roads.

"There is a complex ahead, fairly large and deep underground as well. Three stories worth of concrete and soil before the base even begins. IF my scans are correct, the base is 2 stories deep."

"And any people?"

"Just 10 heat signatures with no other movement."

"So no regular research base then."

"No, that base earlier was much more active than this. Plus, I have found a vent not far away from here that is releasing particulate consistent with diesel engines. They must be using diesel generators to power this base. There is no sign of any heavy metals in the base, it is very sparse."

He mused out loud at that, "So, just a holding facility then? No research, just people to station?"

"Most probably."

He nodded and then flew right down near the convoy. The convoy had stopped at this point as Killian and Hansen were escorted by a bunch of armed guards, who now had automatic rifles now, instead of the small pistols they were sporting when they first met Killian, something that the Crippled doctor no doubt noticed because there was suddenly anxiety and terror in both him and her respectively.

"We step in the moment Hansen is in danger. I don't care what happens to Killian, agreed?" He confirmed with Shuri once more and while it did take her a while, she did respond with an affirmative.

Soon, they were taken to what looked like a cave but was just a cover for the entrance to the base as inside the cave there was a lever that opened a large door with stairs leading straight down. He rolled his eyes, now they would have to wait for these morons to walk down three flights of stairs.

With a sweep of his hand, a violent gust of wind hit the insides of the cave, making everyone lose their balance as he carefully controlled the wind to deposit them as far down as possible, while making sure that no one was too harmed.

"That was not necessary. Also, good to know you can casually generate wind speeds like that." Shuri commented and he groaned in reply. She had somehow taken his declaration of breaking Wakanda's barriers as a challenge of some sort and had taken to documenting each and every one of his abilities, all in a bid to create some sort of countermeasure.

The ceilings in the staircase were fairly tall so both he and Shuri easily entered the space and watched as the head of security definitely cursed and began trudging upstairs, over some of his subordinates, to shut down the door.

Nobody suspected his hand in the violent gust of wind, which was good. He did not want his involvement in this known anywhere. Speaking of which, "Shuri, I want you to delete any records that Wakanda has about my energy signature." He stopped her before she could finish countering, "I know you will not delete it from your personal database, I won't even ask you to. Just make sure nothing about me remains in Wakanda's servers. I don't want to have to come into your country just to delete my own data someday because you guys elected some dumbfuck to be your King, alright?"

"Hey! You can't say that about Wakanda. The next ruler is going to be my brother, and he will make a fine king." Shuri argued with a heated voice.

Well, time to work his magic then. T'Challa was good, great even but to make sure that Wakanda reaches its full potential, they needed Shuri, especially the current rendition who was iron willed and uber smart at the same time, making a terrifying combination for a ruler.

So, with deliberate amusement in his voice, he replied, "Really? As far as I know, you are much, much stronger than your brother at this point and as siblings, you have a right to challenge him for the throne. Are you going to throw the match?"

"...I-I don't–"

"Uh-huh," He stopped her from speaking while he kept an eye on the group which had now finally got their bearings, "I never thought Bast would choose someone who was not confident in everything that mattered. Sure, T'CHalla would make a fine king but ask yourself, is he ready to face all the challenges ahead? Is he even strong enough? There must be a reason you are as strong as you are. Why did Bast make you so much stronger than the other Black Panthers? Things to think about." He offhandedly commented, knowing that it would stay in her mind for a long time because he mentioned Bast this time.

Seriously, the country and its obsession with Bast would have been a big problem had Bast not been a pretty chill goddess, in both mythology and in real life because she was one of the few that stayed on Earth and only interfered when a massive threat to her followers reared its head.

Otherwise, she was content chilling in her dimension, feeding on the faith energy Wakanda provides her.

Up ahead, he watched as the security leader punched in the codes to open the thick bunker doors. Killian and Hansen both tidied up as much as they could as the doors opened with a groan, showing their age.

His eyes narrowed as he saw someone who was the absolute worst person who could get their hands on Extremis.

Baron Strucker.

"Well, Damn," He muttered, happy because now he got to cut off one of HYDRA's heads while getting rid of Extremis as well.

Two Birds with one Stone.

Let's see how HYDRA grows another resourceful head in the short time it has before he obliterates it.


If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #48

Lagos, Nigeria[February 3, 2008]

–Colin Baxter–

"You know that guy? What don't you know? His activities are sparsely detailed even in Wakandan databases." Shuri said and then it hit him. Wakanda knew. About HYDRA and even the smaller branches if they knew who Strucker was and that…that really pissed him off for some reason.

Having data on all countries and acting in your country's interest by sabotaging other countries is one thing, one heinous thing, but to actively ignore an organisation that could actually take over the world one day or was the closest to that goal out of any number of nefarious organisations throughout the world was…angering.

Sighing, he pushed all those away, and entered the Bunker, followed by Killian and Hansen, as the rest of the security guard stayed outside the bunker door that closed with a giant thud that echoed in the empty facility. It looked like some sort of unfinished doomsday bunker with some working facilities.

Strucker took a step forward, "Welcome, Dr.Killian, I hope your travels were comfortable."

Hansen stayed silent as Killian limped forward, "Yes, Mr.Strucker. Let me tell you that I am glad you took time out of your busy–"

Strucker interrupted the classic investor bootlicking, "No need for flowery words, Dr.Killian. I trust you have the final part of your formula?"

His eyes narrowed at that as he whispered to Shuri over the comms, "Scan the entire damned place." As far as his vision went, he could not really see any cameras of any sort that could be transmitting everything happening here live.

Nevertheless, he couldn;t really let whatever it was that Killian planned to hand over, get out of this room. If he had his way with it, the only people alive who would come out of this situation would be him, Shuri and Hansen, no two ways about it.

"I see three people behind that door. One of them is tied to a chair and the rest are guarding him, with guns. Also, no connectivity in this place except those short range radios. No cameras, no motion detectors. Nothing. It is completely isolated." Shuri informed him and he nodded.

Realistically, he did not really trust Shuri with any of the information he was sharing with her but he was going with the mutually assured destruction route here and hoped that Shuri did not really need the Extremis serum with her already substantial enhancements that would put Captain America to shame.

Really, what had she done to gain that level of enhancement, would remain a mystery to him. He would have hoped for Extremis to remain secret but he could definitely work with his, especially once he had a talk with Jin'Ya and both of them figured out what the hell was going on in Wakanda.

"Alright, I want you to make sure that no one kills anyone without my say so. So, keep that man alive." He ordered and she complied. In the meantime, he listened in on the tail end of Strucker's conversation.

"Let me remind you, Doctor, that as per our agreed upon deal, you give me the final piece of the formula that you have kept hidden from everyone, the one that makes people go boom in a spectacular fashion and in return, I give you something that will stop your test subjects from exploding. Now, the formula, please?"

The sound of guns being loaded made the man flinch as he took out a diary from his coat and took out a pen as well. He nodded in appreciation. Killian was at least smart enough to have the data in his brain and not written on some paper like an idiot. That way at least his life could be guaranteed but as expected, the man was a civilian greenhorn.

He would not survive a day under Strucker's hands if Strucker really wanted that formula. No, Strucker was after the finished product and this formula was just a stop in the middle to use as weapons. No, HYDRA were hoarding anything and everything that could help them with their end goal which was world domination and he had no doubts in his mind that Strucker had already arranged the deaths of everyone involved in the creation of perfected Extremis once it was finished.

Strucker snapped his fingers and two soldiers dragged a table and a chair for Killian to sit into and write down the formula. Killian was probably smart enough to recognise that his science team, aside from Hansen, had been infiltrated by all the people who showed interest in his illegal endeavours, so he had kept the most important part to himself.

These morons must not know that Hansen was the real brains behind this thing and would fold under the threat of torture so fast that Killian wouldn't even have the time to say traitor.

"Colin, something is wrong with this man," Shuri informed him as she continued. "His body temperature. It's way higher than it should be. I honestly don't know how this man is even alive at this point."

His eyes narrowed as he remembered something. Hurriedly speaking into the comms, "Scan his vitals. Make sure he is alive. Inform me once you have identified him. Do whatever you have to, make sure he lives."

"Alright."

This little operation just got a whole lot more beneficial for him. Killian continued to write down page after page of the formulas along with the process for Extremis as Strucker just stood there, looking down, amused.

His comms crackled to life as Shuri replied, "This man is different. His body is completely stable despite his entire body being hot enough to the point normal people would have died from heat strokes. I might need a DNA sample after we are done. Also, I got a partial hit on his face structure, it's really tough to get through these thick walls; his name is J.T. James, former street artist, no financial entries after November of last year."

He grinned as he finally got confirmation on it. "Shuri, on my mark. I want you to take care of the guards around him. Make sure J.T. James is unconscious, I will deal with the rest of them."

"Are you sure? I can hel–"

He scoffed, "I can handle this." "Fine."

He moved around the hall, to have a better aim at Strucker. He was going to manifest an Air Door at his foot, a giant One to propel him past Killian and straight into Strucker. Yeah, the fucker was not going to make it today, of that he was certain.

"Shuri, move once you hear it."

"Hear what?" Shuri asked but he did not reply.

Grinning, he angled his body using the smaller doors inside his orange onesie, and after aligning himself, created a giant Door and thrust himself in the direction of Killian. There was a giant boom in the small hall, made worse by the echo as he found himself on the other side, right in front of the door which Shuri was in the process of ripping out, after making two holes in it.

He flicked his hand and activated the enchantment to clean his orange onesie as he looked behind at the sound of bullets being fired. Killian and Hansen were fine due to the Air Doors as he flicked his hand and used the one covering Hansen to let loose a violent burst of wind that flung the soldiers into walls, with sickening crunches of bones being broken.

Within seconds of his initial movement, the entire bunker had gone silent, save for the panic on the other side of the door, which should take a while to open.

He deactivated his stealth, as Shuri did the same, both of them looking at the place where Strucker once was. Now the only thing left was not something nice to look at. Turning to the other side, he waved his hand as Hansen and Killian were deposited to one side of the bunker while another Fire Door manifested in front of the two downed guards and Strucker's remains before it was all burned by the fire.

Walking to the one Inhuman who was supposedly the key to regulating the Extremis output, he kneeled down and touched the man using his CHI. It returned a general reading of the man's health and aside from slight dehydration, he was in good health, with no poison running through his system.

That was good. Turning around, he came face to face with Shuri who was not looking amused by it, "So, you can make fire now? What are you, the freaking Avatar?"

He did a double take at that, "You guys have Anime in Wakanda?" The knee jerk reaction was warranted.

After all, Wakanda was infamously isolationist.

Shuri rolled his eyes at him, "We are isolated, not without taste. In the words of my fellow people, we are "Men of Culture" which I believe is a gender neutral term, just like bro in the English language."

He shrugged, agreeing, "Okay. Now, let's clean up."

After all, he was soon going to have one of the tools that could become the holy grail of human medicine if he played his cards right.

If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #49

African Airspace[February 4, 2008]

–Shuri Udaku–

Sitting in her one man ship she kept for emergencies just like the one that happened back home, she thought about all that had transpired the past week or so when she fled Wakanda, and yes, she did flee Wakanda. There was no need to be so hasty in leaving Wakanda so soon after becoming someone who could dictate the country's policies with a word.

No, at the time, she said to herself that she was only going to America to meet Colin, to take his measure, to see his powers for herself, and to ascertain if he could help her.

"What a mess," SHe sighed as she realised now that those were just lies she was telling herself to justify literally fleeing her home. Dear Bast, she couldn't even imagine the political turmoil she had left in her wake. She couldn't even spare a week to make sure everything was stabilised before leaving to galavant across the country.

Still, "Pull up the scans," the trip was not a waste of time, not at all, she thought to herself as she looked upon the absolute goldmine of data she had been able to gather in her time in America. She couldn't make sense of half the data she had gathered, using a combination of sensors onboard her suit and Wakandan satellites around the world.

Most Wakandan satellites were masked as normal imaging as well as telecom satellites launched by various private companies around the world, using Wakanda's resources to install their hardware at the last moment before they were launched by various countries on the planet.

"Grid map the entire planet, calculate the lattice of satellites required, and set the fabrication to max capacity." She commanded the computer which would then relay her orders to the Royal Laboratories. She couldn't wait to see where else she could find the energy she found in Colin.

Were there other people just as powerful as Colin out there, hidden in the world?

It was like a whole other world just opened up to her, a dangerous and powerful world that was so far ignored by every single King as well as Black Panther before her. Clearly, they were wrong because if she could find and meet Colin with such ease, there must be someone out there hidden even deeper, someone even more powerful.

The thought of it sent chills of thrill and anxiety down her spine. She had a lot of work to do and centuries of mindsets to clear before Wakanda as a country was remotely ready to face the outside world with a position of strength.

The computer beeped as she was forced out of her thoughts. "21 days, huh." She muttered to herself, seeing the time required for all the satellites to be in orbit. The building of satellites was the easy part, it barely took more than a day. At this point, 3-D printing a remote sensing advanced satellite was no more complex than building an IC Engine using her advanced printers but it was the positioning that would take the majority of the time.

While they did have the stealth technology to cloak the satellites, they still ran the risk of someone or something stumbling upon them. No, it was much safer and more importantly, a tried and tested strategy to just mask them as private satellites and then make sure that in case of a crash, the wreckage was retrieved before anyone else.

That had worked for decades for Wakanda and if it worked, she saw no reason to change that right away, especially since she had much more important stuff on her plate already.

The ship slowed down smoothly as she realised she had entered Wakandan airspace and the ship was following the airspace protocols because this specific ship was not registered as a Royal Escort ship. With a twitch of her finger, the protocol was overridden and her identity provided so the Border Tribe does not panic and try to shoot her down.

Soon, she landed on the far right corner of the Royal Palace, the training area for the Black Panthers; it had a small pad overseeing the city of Birnin Zana where she could land her ship.

With a smooth motion, the hatch on which she was lying on slid back and she dropped down from a modest height of 20 ft. It would have required a tuck and roll in the earlier days and even then, some damage was expected but now?

She landed with a solid thunk, not even using Vibranium nanites to absorb the shock from the landing. With a thought, the nanites covered her entire body as the one man ship she did not have a name for zoomed away to park itself in her vault and she jumped off the pad, straight down.

Within a second, she disappeared and fell into a hatch that opened at the last moment, revealing a fake patch of grass that housed an entrance to the underground network of tunnels that housed a bunch of different things.

The subway trains, for both materials and people, the drinking water transportation network, both heated and cold, the secured trains for Military staff, and the smaller tunnel network to be used as a second entrance for the Royal Laboratories' deepest labs, i.e. her personal lab.

The last hatch opened up upon recognising her as the suit decelerated at the last moment. She landed smoothly as the entire lab came alive, lab displays, decorations, data mining, and even her AI project came alive as soon as the lab detected her presence in the room.

It made sense, after all, she had designed this place to be unbreakable. This was her fortress of solitude, after all.

She snickered to herself for that joke, "So much for being Superhuman."

A message was sent to both T'Challa and mother that she was back but would not be joining them for dinner as she worked on getting the satellites in order to see if she could somehow optimise some of the launch sequences. She was sure she could find some tech billionaire satellite project she could bump off the priority list without anyone noticing.

Also, she really needed to check on the higher ups of Wakanda, i.e. the Council. Those people were very powerful people who could increase her work for no reason at all. She did not wish to impose absolute authority using force and she knew that it would be a lost cause doing so.

She would lose what little family she had left if she went that way. The Council was insidious enough to never really step out of the line, just toe it until she got frustrated and made a mistake. They would never willingly give up their power and the only way she could legitimise her position, which would need legitimising because of her radical ideas that she would soon start spreading, was to outperform everyone at the Scuession ceremony.

To show every one of note, in Wakanda, that she, and only she, could become the King of Wakanda. Previously, she thought that having T'Challa on that post would be fine but now she knew that it had to be her, she had to make sure that Wakanda as a nation was so strong that even if they faced near global backlash for their past actions, they would survive.

For that, she needed stuff to change, fast, and Wakanda of now had gotten stagnant, and comfortable, and they could not have that, for they were about to face enemies of their own making, enemies who would not hesitate to slaughter every last one of them for the divine gifts of Bast.

And it was not like they could fight back with lethal force, not when the other side had people like Colin, Bruce Banner and many more who could single handedly defeat her, atleast physically.

Mentally, it was a whole other issue but she did not wish for it to reach that level.

She rolled her eyes as she received the fifth call request from T'Challa.

"What?" She snapped at him who didn't even look phased at her less than pleasant greeting.

"Whoa, what did you bring back from America? That attitude?"

She deadpanned at him, "No, it was with me when I was born."

"What?" And just like the stereotypical middle aged white people, her mother barged into the video call and zoomed way too in. "You did not get an attitude from me. And T'Challa, don't say such things about your sister. Shuri! Where have you been? You look so thin!"

She rolled her eyes at the nagging.

"--Just do as I say and open those doors so I can get you some of your favourite soup. My baby, getting so thin. It's all because of that poison they call food in America. You should have come back every day so I could have fed you properly. Now, look at you!"

Things like that, nagging stuff should have irritated her, and yet, it warmed her heart for some reason. Well, it's not like it would be the end of the world if she gave her mom access to her lab, well, temporary access–one time access only.

Okay, she had control issues!

"Fine. You can come in but only you. T'Challa, I will throw outside and you both know I can do that." She threatened and was satisfied as T'Challa threw his hands up in surrender as the call ended.

He knew his place. Good.


If you guys would like to support me, or just want to read up to 15 chapters ahead, you can head on to my P*treon. It is the same name as my username.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.

DoorMan #50

LA[February 4, 2008]

–Colin Baxter–

With a sigh, he threw his backpack back on the bed and all but collapsed on the very comfortable bed.

"How do people even do this?" He borderline whined, as he looked up at the ceiling, his head filled with the corporate jargon that the people at Stark Industries shoved down his throat. Well, he might be exaggerating a little but the fact remained that he did more compliance related and company policy related work than actual work today.

Work was one thing but all the other little facets that came with the aforementioned work was kinda soul sapping. He could see why the capitalist agenda thrives on giving people easy to access loans and EMIs for them to continue subscribing to this 9-5, which is actually a 9-9, machine that makes the world go round.

With a sigh, he got up from the bed and began getting ready. Today, he was going to get a raincheck for the daily nightly hangout sessions with his fellow interns and then do a quick check in with the new inhabitants at the Red Hearth. It was still a headache for him because he was unsure as to whether he could cross that line, of denying someone leave from what was essentially an unbreakable prison, for an unpowered person anyway.

He was done for the day and while he could delay this meeting by keeping them sedated for a little longer, he had a hunch that it was not going to go well with the resident Gamma geek he had stashed away on the Red Hearth.

Say what you will about Bruce Banner and his supposed weak and timid nature, the man could somehow grow a spine of steel when it came to stuff he disagreed with, and possible human rights violations definitely came into that category.

He did not want Jin'Ya to tear a hole in the ceiling of the Red Hearth and throw the Hulk to the mercy of the thin, almost non existent atmosphere because of something he could have avoided. So, first things first, meet Banner, explain stuff, and see if his cooperation could be secured for the whole Extremis agenda.

Blasting his face with the fancy shower, filled with ice cold water, his body relaxed at the touch. The bathroom was a thing of beauty as well, having multiple options included in an inbuilt steam room. All the taps had settings, very much more complex than normal bathrooms. There was the normal cold and hot water, then there were settings around that as well.

It was all named funky as well. The iced water setting he was using right now was "Straight from Norway's Ice bath temperatures" and many other settings. The hottest one was the liquid magma setting and according to his knowledge, was a hit with all the ladies that lived in this building.

He couldn't imagine the cost that the contractor must have quoted to Stark Industries when the contractor received the plans for the building. Getting out of the bathroom, he sighed as the slightly warm air of the bedroom hit him.

With that out of the way, he quickly got dressed and after checking the enchantments around his room and confirming that nothing was out of the ordinary, waved his arm multiple times mid air as a portal opened in his room and jumped through, to the other side.

"Home Sweet Home!" He exclaimed with his hands spread out as if he was some circus artist who had jumped out of a hole in the floor, except in his case, he had jumped through a hole in the universe, powered by dimensional energies that made the foundational building blocks of the material universe.

"Yeah, Yeah, we're so happy that the Emperor Laziness is his virtue, finally found time to come to his home to solve his mess." Jin'Ya snarked mentally and then appeared in front of him in a flash of purple and blue, manifesting as a small floating orb which then turned into his most preferred form in the material world, his small lizard body.

The eyes on Jin'Ya's tiny face narrowed in his direction, something that not everyone could detect and he had the honor of being able to do that after spending a lot of time in the Ancient Dragon's vicinity, "Why do I feel as if you just insulted me? Don't make me read your thoughts, young man!"

He flipped the lizard off before walking into the elevator that then led to the kitchen. He'd already pinged Dr.Banner about his arrival so the man should be arriving soon. IT took a while for the man to leave his sparsely equipped lab because he truly had very high standards when it came to scientific equipment and the thing about high grade science equipment was that, in most cases, it was more tightly regulated than guns, bombs, and even small missiles.

So, yeah, progress was slow going on that front because he had to smuggle all that stuff without raising any alarms about unexplainable disappearances` and bringing heat upon the portal magic that KAmar Taj uses. After all, the version of Ancient One that he was most familiar with was the slightly firm but overall kind and skilled Magic Sorceress who could destroy you down to your very soul without even flinching and he had no desire to get to know the version of the Ancient One that most demons and Dark entities know her as.

"So, what do you plan on doing with both of them? I checked and both of them are clean, if we take the average human psyche as a benchmark," JIn'Ya remarked and he slumped on the spot, as the elevator slowed down with a single push of a button. Turning to Jin'Ya, he said, "What do you want me to do? I can't just let both of them get out into the open, they'll be either dead, imprisoned, in so much pain that they wished they were dead, or any number of those combinations."

Jin'Ya, unphased with his moral dilemma, nodded, "Yes but in your own words, you are also imprisoning them, just in a vastly better scenario."

He nodded and then straightened up. Slapping his face, he took in a deep breath and exhaled, "Yeah, I know." Then, he looked straight at Jin'Ya, with absolute determination in his eyes, "Doesn't matter because more important things are at stake. If hundreds, thousands, millions of people can be saved, I am fine with two people bitching and whining while living in absolute luxury and if the carrot doesn't work, I am sure you can act as the stick in this case,"

"Good. Because while morals are a nice thing to have, you have to be alive first to exercise them and no good will come with good guys not doing anything because of morals while evil thrives because it has no such limitations…What? Why are you laughing?!"

Jin'Ya manifested a purple finger of pure psionic energy and jabbed him in the chest as he stood there, almost folded in half, laughing his guts out.

"W-What," He wheezed, barely getting the words out, "What w-was that? That was sooo crin—ooof." He then lay on the ground, courtesy of Jin'Ya's psionic punch, which really hurt because the fucker had figured out how to hit the Astral Avatar with his punches, instead of the physical body.

No worries, this was another form of training. He just wished it was not this painful every time Jin'Ya got pissy enough to use it in their arguments.

"You know, someday I am going to stop imparting my wisdom to you and you are going to absolutely regret it," Jin'ya said as he was pulled up from the ground and…

"Argh," He held his nose as his face was painfully smacked by the ceiling of the elevator they were currently in.

"Okay, that's it," He said as CHI flared throughout his body, creating a cloak of yellow around him that blocked Jin'Ya's psionic energy from taking hold of his body. It wouldn't hold if the Dragon got serious about exerting more and more of his soul in the real world, but for now, it was more than enough.

_____xx_____

The Kitchen, Red Hearth

–Bruce Banner–

"So, yeah, that's the gist of it. Look, I know you don't like this whole thing but I want you to really think of it and how the world would react if they knew about the serum, her whereabouts, and the key to unlocking functionally biological immortality."

He sat there, deep in thought as Colin finished explaining what he had the prior night before coming here, or was it the prior day? It got very convoluted to explain events when multiple time zones were involved. He knew certain things were missing from Colin's explanation but for the most part, even if it did disturb him to admit that internally, Colin was right.

He looked at Colin who actually looked nervous for that part, as if Colin was waiting for him to agree with the kidnappings because that's what they would be if they were not going to let go of both of those people. It wouldn't matter even if their lives were in supreme danger.

After almost a minute of silence and deliberation, he replied, "I-I don't know what the consequences of this will be but I do know that your fears are true. This Extremis serum, it cannot be allowed to land in the hands of the people who would tear the world apart for it."

Colin all but beamed, "Right? Right? There is still a lot of work to be done but my broad vision is that we need a version of Extremis that doesn't create half molten men capable of regenerating endlessly but a lesser one that can only–"

"Heal one time, exploiting Extremis' ability to flash DNA changes on the go to heal and regenerate even organs with a single dose or even a series of treatments." His mind whirled at the implications.

The medical ones aside, he would be a fool not to recognise the other aspects of this serum and what Colin was hinting at. It would be world changing, and if there was one thing he had been accused of by Ross, correctly, was his need for SCIENCE! surpassing his survival instincts.


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