Technomancer in MCU #1

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't own anything. Please support the official release.

Chapter 35

Technomancer in MCU

Previously

He then stood up tall and in our eyes, he seemed to grow even taller as he said, "The only question is will you stand with us or against us?"

The sound of the President gulping could be heard by everybody inside the room.

________________________________________________________________

–Ed–

I must admit, I had gotten a little carried away in my speech.

The President looked like he had swallowed a particularly sour lemon.

He was looking at my outstretched hand like it was a snake about to swallow him completely.

Fury and the others were no better.

They looked at me in caution as I asked or more likely, gave them an ultimatum regarding their actions.

After a while of just staring, the President looked at my hand and hesitantly shook his head.

Huh.

Never thought he would grow a spine at this moment.

I nodded and retracted my hand and said, "Very well. I just hope that we don't meet on opposite ends, Mr.President. I will not show mercy."

Frightened by my words, he frantically waved his hands and said hurriedly, "No No NO! You are misunderstanding me. It's not that I don't want to support you. Believe me, I do. Allying with you at this point would all but ensure my victory in the next elections."

I leveled a confusing look at him and said, "I don't understand."

He then sighed and all the energy seemed to drain out of him as he sagged in his seat, "Majority of the people in the government would never agree with what you want to do. I won't be able to openly support you even if I wanted to."

He then gestured to Fury and said, "His organisation might have the power to cooperate with you but his backers won't allow that. I think the best we can do is a policy of open non-interference but even then the various black cells present in our government would still move against you, they would just lose the ability to do so in the light."

I gave an understanding nod at that.

"Very well, then. I have emailed all of the information I told you about to your secured servers. Most of your questions will be answered there itself."

I then nodded to myself and said, "And consider this a gift. I'll publicly offer NASA to ferry anything they want to and fro from anywhere in the solar system."

I could see their eyes almost popping out of their sockets.

Before they could launch into one of their tirades though, I raised my hand and stopped them, "And no, no weaponization of this offer. All of it would be contingent on NASA declaring all the findings in the public domain. This would also not be free. Substantial amounts of money will be charged for this. I will allow exploratory operations of any kind as long as they are unmanned. Manned operations will have to wait for a while."

I then waved my hands and said, "You know what? I'll have one of my people give a visit to NASA and they'll just hash out everything."

"Anyway, it has been nice meeting you, gentlemen. If you'll excuse me, I have another place to be."

"WAIT!" Fury shouted.

Anticipating this, I smirked at him and gestured at him to go on, "What is it, Fury? Do know that my time is very much limited. I have to go resolve issues that you don't even know of."

Ah, he was grinding his teeth at that. It's so much fun seeing him do that.

"We still don't have any clue regarding who you are, where you came from, where you operate, and so on. If you want us to trust you, the information flow needs to go both ways. You know all there is to know about us but we know next to nothing about you." he asked me, frustration written all over his face.

I made a show of sighing and said, "Look, Fury. If we had come to an accord over greater cooperation, then I might have deigned to tell you more but as it is now, our situation calls for greater isolation. We will continue doing our business how we used to do it before, in complete stealth. "

He went to speak more but I forestalled him and said, "When we are needed, you can be damn sure that we will be there. As I said before, no transfer of technology will happen between us for reasons I don't think I need to repeat again."

Fury ground his teeth together and then seemed to have come to a decision.

Squaring his shoulders, he said, "If you walk out of here without agreeing to at least some of our demands, I will be forced to declare your organisation, at least internally, to be a terrorist organisation. You will be hunted down for your technology by us."

Damn!

I didn't think Fury had it in him to do this.

Good thing he is playing right into our hands then.

I laughingly waved him off and said, "Please, you guys wouldn't even know we existed if not for the invasion. Do your worst."

Amidst their shouts, Alfred chose to shrink and phase me to the jet.

Alfred's digital avatar popped up in front of me and he said determinedly, "The Gamma-tier weapons of the carrier are ready to be fired."

I deadpanned at his behaviour.

Even the lowest-tier weapons on the super-class carrier would obliterate entire blocks. Sustained fire could decimate small towns.

I waved him off and said, "You know we can't do that. Then even the Avengers won't work with us and you know how important that is to the plan."

His avatar slumped dramatically and said, "I know. Deactivating all weapons on board then."

I snorted a laugh at his dramatic behaviour, "You do realise that I know you never activated any of the weapons. You won't threaten the civilians nearby and the innocents inside the White House by attacking it."

He then blew a raspberry at me and his avatar vanished.

It was quite disturbing to see an old face doing that.

On my HUD, I could see the jet getting out of the bunker and towards the moon. The superclass carrier was going towards its new assignment, orbiting the planet.

After multiple discussions and debates internally as well as with Alfred, I had come to the consensus that the Super Class carrier should be on high availability at all times.

Canon, as I know it has gone off the rails and there is no telling which threat might rear its ugly head sooner than expected.

So, with the invisible sword of Damocles hanging over my head, I had no other choice but to deploy my strongest weapon near orbit.

It was a masterpiece.

The strongest weapon I would be able to build after this would involve either an Infinity stone, Uru, or Pym Particle tomfoolery.

It was built with an Adamantium exterior and a Vibranium interior. It made it the most durable ship built without reality-warping shenanigans.

For all I know, Wanda could just conjure up a theoretical metal stronger than even Vibranium.

It had enough provisions for nearly 10,000 people to live on it. Of course, we were nowhere near that level in terms of headcount but Alfred built it on the assumption that someday, it might be necessary to use this carrier in conjunction with Earth's forces, acting as a modern-day Ark as a last-resort.

With the energy sources embedded in the carrier along with advanced matter converters, theoretically, a large human colony could survive on that ship for decades, centuries if they get enough supplies.

It was powered by one main N-Reactor and 4 backup Giant Arc reactors.

Any one of those could power up the entire carrier for decades without any issue but to operate the Alpha-tier energy weapons onboard, the N-Reactor needed to be used at full load.

Contrary to what was portrayed in comic books, Stark's Arc reactor was not the be-all and end-all for energy generation.

To be clear, it was fine for anything Earth had to power.

The gamma cannon on this carrier was just another beast altogether.

For every activation, that cannon ate enough energy to power the entire Earth for 1 month. That number gets even more preposterous when you factor in the fact that it was built using a Vibranium base, which shot its overall efficiency figures to the low 90s.

A single shot of that cannon would punch through multiple planets with ease.

The N-Reactor was just a room-size sphere of Pure Vibranium with an outer coating of an Adamantium alloy. The interesting properties of Vibranium allowed us to harness what was essentially the power of the sun.

Alfred had the crazy idea at first when I vetoed it. Back then it was just us two. Now, with all the new heads in the organisation, in collusion with Alfred, proposed it to me and strong-armed me into giving it the green signal.

All the concessions I could get was a guarantee that only one would exist at any given point.

At its core, the N-reactor was named as such because of its origin of energy. The biggest nuke that Alfred could build and realistically fit inside the sphere was built and detonated inside that sphere of pure Vibranium. The energy inside was absorbed by the processed vibranium as pure energy. Coating vibranium in celestial body fluid dramatically increases all its energy-related properties.

All the energy released by the nuke upon explosion, conservative estimates range in YottaWatts, was trapped inside the sphere and using advanced superconductors, once again made of Vibranium, we were able to tap into that energy whenever we required.

Thus, turning a force of pure destruction into a source of energy that would quite literally power Humanity as it is now till our extinction.

BEEP!

I watch as a team of scientists, using Gravitonium based anchoring devices, stabilise one of the portals that were formed because of the convergence.

It was pea-sized right now but the team predicted its gradual expansion until it would finally settle at 15-20 feet in diameter.

Jane Foster would give anything to be a part of that team.

It's a shame that her association with Thor rendered any chance of her becoming a part of our organisation, moot.

"Alfred, chart a course to London, will you?"

"Yes, sir."

Without so much as a small lurch, the jet did a ninety-degree turn and sped off towards London.

________________________________________________________________

Word Count - 1780

If you guys want to read ahead, you can head on to my Patreon
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Author Note

As promised, another chapter served on the platter for you guys!

I have another 10 hours of train journey ahead of me so I might just finish up another chapter or start working on my other fic, whatever the mind worms decide.

Toodles!

 

[preier]

Squaring his shoulders, he said, "If you walk out of here without agreeing to at least some of our demands, I will be forced to declare your organisation, at least internally, to be a terrorist organisation. You will be hunted down for your technology by us."

Click to shrink...

That seems like a spectacularly, Secret-Invasion-worthy, stupid-

, at least internally,

Click to shrink...

Ok, that's less stupid.

 

[ZeX Zero]

Could he make something to get the light and Dark from Destiny and could he also make a personal ghost or make Alfred his Ghost, then that would solve his problem or go the opposite direction and make a super soldier chamber but flood it with Void, he'll stop being human but at least he'll be alive, might even get lucky and become a Tenno.

 

[Fenrir112]

I greatly enjoyed this so far. Thank you for your efforts!

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Could he make something to get the light and Dark from Destiny and could he also make a personal ghost or make Alfred his Ghost, then that would solve his problem or go the opposite direction and make a super soldier chamber but flood it with Void, he'll stop being human but at least he'll be alive, might even get lucky and become a Tenno.

Click to shrink...

Umm..

 

[SIDoragon]

the convergence, even the early part of it, shouldn't be happening for at least another year.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't own anything. Please support the official release.

Chapter 36

Technomancer in MCU

Previously

"Alfred, chart a course to London, will you?"

"Yes, sir."

Without so much as a small lurch, the jet did a ninety-degree turn and sped off towards London.

________________________________________________________________

London

–Ed–

Soon, the Big Ben came into view.

"Alfred, use the leftover energies from the space stone to lock down the space surrounding the portal once we reach there. I don't want any unexpected complications to arise from there."

"Are you sure, sir? That would use up nearly 6% of our Space stone energy reserves." Alfred replied.

"Why so much?" I asked him, slightly shocked at the expenditure.

Due to the generous use of Vibranium in all of our energy-related technology, our efficiency figures never dipped below 90% and 6% of our energy reserves was a lot.

"Sir, it's due to the convergence. While the bigger events will take a while to happen, the space surrounding this area has already become substantially more malleable than usual. Also, I am detecting some interference in the surrounding space. Somebody is trying to break the dimensional walls." Alfred replied.

My eyes widened in realisation as I said, "So, somebody is trying to take advantage of the weakening barriers during the Convergence. Must be some demon or hell lord trying to send their agents of chaos here. Do alert the Ancient One."

Before Alfred could reply, a small golden portal opened up in front of me and a small rolled-up scroll flew through it, dropping it right at my feet.

I rolled my eyes at that.

Honestly, how she managed to open a portal in front of me, keep it geo-locked since the jet was moving at a very high speed and deposit the scroll right at my feet, is beyond me.

Probably even Strange would not have that level of granular control, even when he would ascend to the level of Sorcerer Supreme.

It read - 'Don't worry about the Order, outsider. I have the dimensional barriers covered. Focus on your quest. It shall either grant you tremendous rewards or give a terrible enemy access to weapons that can remold the fabric of our universe. No Pressure '

Yeah, Right. No Pressure. Thanos with the Reality Stone is already undefeatable in my eyes if he can use it properly. And she says no pressure. Hilarious.

"Approaching Convergence Site A" Alfred helpfully reminded me.

The jet, in stealth mode, approached a garden?

Somehow, the first portal to open on Earth due to the convergence happened to be right in the middle of a children's playing park.

The jet crossed the illusion barrier and a makeshift site came into view.

Only, because it was made by us, it was made of vibranium-lattice nanites.

We truly use that stuff a lot, don't we?

Before I could disembark the ship though, a whining sound emerged from the jet as a thin blue beam emerged from its underbelly, which then unfolded itself to become slightly longer. The whine reached its crescendo when a blue wave was emitted from the beam.

Almost immediately, a near-transparent blue barrier surrounded the entire makeshift facility.

Almost immediately, a thin wiry, glasses-wearing man with a fierce scowl on his face exited the facility and upon seeing me, the scowl on his face somehow worsened.

I didn't even know that it was possible to do that.

Apparently, angered upon seeing me, he stomped towards me as fast as someone with a walking stick could.

Despite, numerous attempts by me and Alfred to have Dr.Lawson get treatment for his eyes and his legs, he refuses to do so.

I like being old-fashioned in some ways that still matter, he says.

After being told off a little too many times, I backed off.

"What were you and your freaky AI thinking when you, without my prior approval, activated machinery that would have rendered all my efforts since I came here, moot?" he brandished his walking stick at me and shouted vehemently.

Apparently, Alfred had forgotten to mention to Dr.Lawson regarding the effects of the space block on his equipment.

Sure, he is the most advanced A.I. on this side of the galaxy, has processing prowess matched only by perhaps the Supreme Intelligence and somehow he forgot to mention a crucial thing to the now very irate scientist.

I wonder why I tolerate Alfred sometimes.

I raised my hands placatingly and explained to him, "I am sorry, Dr.Lawson. You know how Alfred is. He must not have informed you regarding the space lock."

His face turned an even darker shade of red at the mention of Alfred.

Oh boy, Alfred must not have stopped making his coffee taste like coal then.

I sweatdropped as he went into a huge tirade about Alfred.

About how he was always bothering him, changing his coffee, abruptly changing the destination on his vehicles, and fighting for control with him whenever he tried to wrest back control of said vehicle, and the list went on and on.

I mentally noted to myself to order Alfred to stop doing his pranks on people above 50. At least those that haven't had their bodies enhanced by us.

It would be a huge loss if we lost the foremost expert we had on gravitational anomalies, to something as preventable as a heart attack.

Someday, I might have to do the procedure on him, without his consent anyway. Especially since he is on the cusp of weaponising portals. The sorcerer's portals need an edge to them and Dr.Lawson is the one who is going to provide it.

Sure, if Thanos is actually defeated by just opening a portal and closing it once he is halfway through, I'll feel pretty stupid for doing all the other preparations but it will be a victory and I would be free from that particular Sword Of Damocles.

"Are you even listening to me, you snot-nosed brat?" Dr.Lawson's irate face with a vein popping out of his forehead appeared in front of me.

I lean slightly away from him and more importantly, his walking stick that I know was upgraded since I can see the shine of the Arc reactor coming out of its small crevices.

As soon as I focused on the walking stick, a blown-out view of all of its weapons and features appeared on my retina HUD.

Sure, the man refuses to have his legs healed but is okay walking around with a small army's worth of firepower in his walking stick.

Does he even know how much damage that stick he is brandishing around can do?

Clearing my throat, I said to him as sternly as I could, "Dr.Lawson, while I am sorry about the lack of notice to you, I am still your superior and this kind of language doesn't suit someone of your station."

He just looked at me like I was a fool.

He then waved that death stick of his and turned around, huffing and puffing as he stomped back to his office, "You can shove your superior position where the sun doesn't shine and tell that damn AI to stay out of my way."

He then paused right before the door and turned towards me, saying, "Now, do you still want your report or do I have to kick you out of my site?"

Then without listening to my response, he just walked on ahead, uncaring of his insulting attitude.

I could see the guards and the researchers nearby, watching the show and chuckling quietly to themselves.

Enjoying their leader being embarrassed and scolded by someone who apparently doesn't care about my power at all.

I looked ahead and walked into the good doctor's office shamelessly, pretending that I didn't hear all of them howling in laughter once I entered the site.

Entering his office, I could see Dr.Lawson clearing up his desk from a pile of papers taller than he was.

Sighing, I said, "Doctor, I am sure that you are aware we have hard light projectors that can give you the same feel as hard paper without cluttering your space to the point it can't even be called one anymore."

I gestured to the ground, where not a single foot could be kept without stepping on a piece of paper that had advanced mathematical formulas written on them.

Scoffing, he waved me off, "Bah! What do you youngsters know? Nothing and I mean, Nothing can replicate the feeling of writing down a formula on a piece of paper and staring at it for hours, trying to figure it out."

I gave up.

"Alfred, clean this place up, will you?" I ordered Alfred out loud.

He didn't reply but several hard light constructs appeared around the paper.

I snorted once I saw the look on Dr.Lawson's face.

Alfred, smartass that he was, had actually projected brooms and dustpans around the entire office, showing the pages being collected into the dustpan and then into a dustbin labeled as "Garbage"

Ignoring his vehement protests, I stepped on the finally clutter-free flooring and sat on one of the chairs.

Alfred, understanding my intent, projected hard light tongs and grabbed Dr.Lawson like he was a piece of bread and unceremoniously dropped him in his chair like a sack of potatoes.

I held in my laughter at that scene.

Looks like I'll have to assign Dr.Lawson one of the VIs for a while.

While they can reduce efficiency figures of research pipelines, it is not by much and I don't think Dr.Lawson or anyone on his team for that matter will allow Alfred in their systems anymore. If I forced them, it might just start a mutiny here.

Not letting any of my thoughts show on my face, I crossed my legs and said, "So, doctor. What do you have for me?"

He opened his mouth, probably to berate me but I stopped him and said, "I'll be honest with you, Dr.Lawson. There are many others in the organisation and even outside who will be more than happy to sign any binding contract for an opportunity to sit in the same chair as you do. So please, tell me straight. What do you know so far?"

He got red-faced, probably angered by my insinuation that he was easily replaceable to me, but controlled it in the end and handed me one of the manilla folders that was sitting on his desk.

Taking ahold of it, I opened it and looked inside to find all the findings regarding the portal, including its rate of expansion, different esoteric energies being emitted from it, energies spewing out of it that are not indigenous to Earth, and so on.

"You know" he began, "I am not stupid. It's just that years of working alone and being ridiculed for my hard work have probably jaded me more than I would admit. On top of that, your A.I. is a royal pain in the butt to deal with. You have to admit that."

I opened my mouth to defend Alfred but closed it slowly once I thought of all the things the crew had had to deal with because of his shenanigans. They only tolerate him because they are scared of me and Alfred doesn't do anything when the situation calls for it.

It does help that he has a near-perfect record of helping coordinate all missions.

"See" he pointed towards me, "Even you know that."

He then sighed and said," That matter aside, the portal is stable and now that the space has been locked, we'll be able to study it in more depth. Is there any way we can quarantine this zone until the Convergence is done? More than one member has approached me regarding their concerns about an invisible portal that changes its destination appearing right in the middle of a children's park. People could die, Ed."

He was right.

Not only was the destination of the portal changing from Svartalfheim to Jotunheim to any one of the nine realms.

No other realm other than Earth is hospitable for Humans.

Even Vaneheim, the closest to Earth in terms of atmospheric composition, has nearly 10X Earth's gravity.

Even 6 times Earth's gravitational force would be fatal to all healthy adults.

Let alone children.

Nodding at his question, I reply, "Don't worry. I'll have somebody look into it. The easiest way to do it would be to alert S.H.I.E.L.D. about it but then they would want to butt their heads in the research as well. And we both know how disastrous it would be if S.H.I.E.L.D. gets its hands on portal creation technology."

He nodded at that.

I then stood up and said, "Don't worry, though. I'll do something. Maybe a radiation leak will quarantine this place for atleast a year then or we can just outright buy this place through our corporations. Anyway, continue your research and I'll expect to see you during the monthly departmental head meeting."

"Very well. Now let me do my work in peace and make sure that infernal AI doesn't stay in the systems."

I nodded sheepishly at that and swiftly left his office.

"Alfred, make sure you don't go anywhere near Dr.Lawson, at least until the Convergence. It is imperative that he does his research in peace and while I might find your pranks endearing, it has become a real nuisance to him. So, please, leave him alone." I whispered to my suit.

Alfred's hologram appeared on my retina HUD with a literal cloud over his head.

I deadpanned at that.

I shook my head and ordered him to take me to the Moon.

I had a meeting with Black Bolt that I needed to prepare for.

It's time I had a meeting with the strongest Inhuman and either brought him into the fold or eliminated him.

Also, "Alfred, do remind me to take care of Maximus permanently while I am there, will you?"

"Roger that, sir." his reply came in a subdued voice.

Oh, come on. Not this again.

________________________________________________________________

Word Count - 2368

Extra chapters - Patreon

REJOICE!

The shorter chapters backlog has now finished and all the chapters after this one should have ~2.5k words/chapter.


Author Note

Once Again, I am sorry BUT in my defense, I just moved to a city 1500km(35hrs) away from my home and had to find a place to stay, figure out the public transport (As it would take another week for my bike to reach here) and find good enough food for my tastebuds.

YOU try doing all of that in a span of 3 days all the while maintaining correspondence with the company that managed to somehow send me 3 different types of formats for the document arrangement( I ended up doing all 3 types and so didn't have to do it again on the spot but that is another point altogether).

Good news is that today was my first day and I am now officially an employee (Yay!) and am now in the training phase. One advantage of that is I have a pretty good idea of what my schedule will be after this. So I should be able to catch up and maybe(hopefully) even stockpile on some chapters this weekend.

Anyway, thank you for reading my rant.

Toodles!

 

[Amodock]

If someone fucked with my coffee, I would kill them. It does not matter that they were am A.I. I would find a way to give them a Virus that would give them Cancer in return for fucking with the most important meal of the day

 

[Brian the dor]

You expect respect when you have an ai doing petty shit like making coffee taste like coal, rerouting destinations on cars?

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't own anything. Please support the official release.

Chapter 37

Technomancer in MCU

Previously

I had a meeting with Black Bolt that I needed to prepare for.

It's time I had a meeting with the strongest Inhuman and either brought him into the fold or eliminated him.

Also, "Alfred, do remind me to take care of Maximus permanently while I am there, will you?"

_________________________________________________________

The Asterisk, Moon

–Ed–

As I was nearing Asterisk, I gave the order to Alfred to prep the Inhuman resurgence protocols.

It was a set of instructions Alfred had made way back in the day and improved upon as we came upon additional data regarding the Kree's experiments on humans.

He had seen my memory of the Kree crystals being spread through the oceans and millions of Inhumans being spontaneously turned into their enhanced forms.

To prevent that and also to contain the Inhumans on the moon if the time came, Alfred put Inhuman Extinction devices on his list for weapons development.

Upon centuries of research in simulated time using the time stone, Alfred had found out that the Inhumans as a species were unstable.

How the Ancient One continued to favour and dare I say, dote upon Alfred and not even letting me access the tomes was just hypocritical. It never fails to make me jealous.

For God's sake, he has access to time-stone energy stored in Vibranium ingots and even access to all but the most vile tomes of magic.

It was just favoritism at that point.

What made that defect worse was their marriage systems.

There was no genetic diversity in their genome pool.

Perks of being sequestered away in a hidden city on the moon, I suppose.

They had immunity figures reaching just 10% of an average human's.

It was pathetic compared to even the mildly enhanced, let alone to the likes of Dr.Banner and Steve Rogers.

The funny thing was, Alfred didn't need to do research under a time-dilated environment but he was so excited to finally use the time stone energy that he didn't think of the importance of the task at hand and just went on ahead.

At this point, the protocols consisted of a variety of options to deal with the Inhumans.

They ranged from exposure to the common cold to a genetically engineered virus, developed in the future by Alfred, that would systematically target and eliminate subjects with a specific gene.

In this case, it was the Inhuman gene that was targeted by the virus.

"Oh, and Alfred, make sure that the more genocidal parts of the protocol are left aside, alright?" I ordered Alfred.

"......"

"......"

"Alfred?", I asked him again.

"Order Received," came a completely robotic voice, devoid of any emotion or trace of similarity with Alfred's original voice that he had chosen after scouring the internet for audio samples.

I sighed at that.

Seems like he was still holding on to the incident of Dr.Lawson.

I might have taken his side but at this critical juncture, he must know some limits.

Shaking my head, I temporarily ignored his tantrum and pushed the switch to open the ramp.

The plane landed but it seemed unnecessarily jerky as it seemed to take a second to find its position.

Sighing at yet another sign of a tantrum from Alfred, I said in a stern voice, "Alfred, just because I tolerate your actions does not mean you get blanket permission to jeopardize mission-critical equipment. Restrain yourself or I will be forced to. Do you understand?"

Came a muffled, "Yes", from the jet speakers.

I nodded at his response and disembarked from the jet.

The first thing I see upon exiting the ramp is a spic and span Frank Castle with a crooked grin on his face.

That only meant one thing to me.

That before this, he was completely covered in blood, his or his enemies'.

Seems the Vampire assignment went a bit sideways then.

When I was nearing him, he handed he swiped his hand toward me and a hard light projection came into being right into my hand.

Frank waited for me as I sifted through the report.

While it did go sideways once Frank went all Punisher on the vampires, both elders and the thralls under them were killed and the humans who could be saved, were rescued and the ones who were beyond saving were given a painless death.

Something fierce burned inside me when I read the number of lives that were lost to become the blood bags for these elder vampires despite them having an accord with most governments of the world.

Before I could give Frank his next orders though, he beat me to and said to me in a gruff voice, "I've already been debriefed and I volunteered myself for the Attilan mission, Boss."

Giving him a deadpan stare, I said, "Noo, I have a deal with Maria. You don't go on back-to-back missions that involve death and destruction of this degree. If you don't go back to her, she might just come here and try and drag me along with you."

His excited demeanor wilted at the mention of his wife and he shot me a betrayed look at the mention of the deal I made with his wife.

I raised my hands in mock surrender and said, "Hey, it's your wife. Go talk to her. What are you looking at me for?"

He grumbled something to himself under his breath and turned around, waking to the road that went to the colony we had established for the full-time employees and their families under the rock surface of the moon.

Once I was sure that Frank was out of listening range, I ordered Alfred, "We need to send a message to these Elders. Preferably, directly to Dracula. Send a few of our teams along with a full-size carrier to Romania. Kill a few of the elders and remind Dracula as to why they are still alive and not hunted down to the darkness of the world."

After getting the confirmation from Alfred, I finally head to my rejuvenation pod.

I had had a very hectic day and needed to get some shut-eye.

The good news was that with CHI crystals, I barely needed 2 hours of sleep for my mind.

The bad news was that my body was a different story as it needed to be submerged in CHI infused liquids for at least 10 hours for it to be even remotely functional for the next 14 hours.

_________________________________________________________

[1 hour later]

The Asterisk

–Daisy Johnson–

Seeing your team leader who is a 6'4 absolute hunk of a man being manhandled by an absolutely petite woman, no more than 5'1, is always a shock to the system.

Of course, none of the squad members dared to make fun of Commander Castle for that. The terror of Maria Castle was well known throughout the base and even beyond it.

It is rumored that even Big Boss Ed could get an earful of Maria's legendary temper if Commander Castle comes home injured.

She shuddered to even think about what Big Boss must get scared of.

Finding out about the first assignment where she would be going in alone, especially with just the leader of their organisation would have made her faint by now if it wasn't for the many many enhancements she went through under Alfred's supervision.

Nowadays, she bet she could take a head-on punch from the Hulk and come out the other side unscathed.

In fact, she was by far, the strongest on the team. Of course, she had no delusions of besting Frank freaking Castle in combat but she was certainly no pushover.

Her records proved that.

Perfect combat records with a 100% mission completion rate and a pesky 95% recommendation level from Commander Castle.

That was the only blemish on her otherwise perfect record.

As she got the mission parameters, she came to a screeching halt on her way to her quarters.

Raising her hand to look at her smartwatch, she said, "Alfred, what are these parameters?"

The smartwatch projected the hologram of an old man in his 70s with a bespoke three-piece suit, the preferred avatar of Alfred and he said with an air of finality, "What of them? You are given your orders. Follow them."

She glared at him for his smug way of speaking. He knew what she was talking about and was being an ass just for the sake of it.

Sometimes, she wondered how did Alfred turn out like this if, according to the rumour mill, he was based on the thought patterns of Big Boss.

He is like the dream man come true and then there is this Turd.

Of course, She let none of my thoughts even remotely show on her face as she didn't want to get sucked out of the airlock of the base again.

She knew She could survive, but you know, why go through the hassle?

"I meant that the parameter section of the mission is empty. I don't need to tell you how that is unusual, do I?"

"There is nothing wrong with my mission parameters. Those are the ones personally given by Ed." He said and then rolled his eyes as he continued, "According to him, the mission parameters could change wildly at a moment's notice in response to minute changes in the situation so the ones who should accompany him must have the capabilities to respond to said changes effectively and actually keep up with him."

A smile began to form on her face as she heard his answer, "And you chose me? Aww, Alfred! You do like me then!" She said in a babying voice, knowing that it absolutely drove him nuts when she did that.

His face contorted into a grimace of rage as his hologram turned red and he said, "Be glad that I didn't insist on Frank accompanying you as he would have extracted all the excitement out of you. As a matter of fact, why don't I just tell him about the half-assed training you have been doing since he was assigned the training of the new generation of Inhumans?"

her face paled at that and she hurriedly said to him, begging and pleading, "Please don't do that. The last time I tried to skip training, I couldn't feel my limbs and my powers for a month, even under constant CHI bombardment."

He smirked triumphantly at her as he said, "Well, of course that happened. The power negation aspect of Frank's power is said to be matched only by reality warpers and the current Sorcerer Supreme, who can also be called a reality warper. He can temporarily negate even the Hulk's powers, let alone yours."

He had no reason whatsoever to speak that disdainfully, especially the part about her power.

As she was about to launch another tirade against him for speaking ill of her power, she remembered her mission.

Her first mission alone with the Big Boss. The shining knight of her dreams.

She swiftly deactivated her watch and skipped hurriedly toward her quarters, determined to look her best for tomorrow's important mission.

_________________________________________________________

[10 hours later]

Captain's quarters, The Asterisk

–Ed–

Waiting for my body to wake up, following a dip in the CHI tank is always a very constricting feeling.

My mind, being supremely more powerful than my body, wakes up immediately compared to my sluggish-feeling body.

Upon waking up, I ruthlessly crush the instinctual attempt by my powers to scan for any technology nearby, to scan, combine, and create new technology. Even a light ping of nearby-enabled technology will dip my lifespan by hours.

I have had to rely on Alfred to connect to any of my technology.

Using them manually, like a peasant.

How embarrassing.

If there are any variants of me with a perfectly fine body, they must be laughing at me, struggling to use the very technology I built with my own powers and having to resort to using them like everyone who isn't a Technomancer.

Hearing the hiss of the tube being opened, I prepare myself for the situations ahead of me.

Alfred had informed me yesterday that Daisy "Quake" Johnson herself was selected to be my partner for this particular excursion.

According to Alfred's hilarious reports on her, the only reason Alfred recommended her was because it would be funny for him to see her fail.

Oh, and also because Frank gave her his glowing seal of recommendation.

She's a natural, he says in his reports.

I don't think that will ever happen again.

Then again, she is impressive. So are her powers.

They differed a bit from her canon powers.

In canon, she was shown to generate vibrations from her body, which actually harmed her own body at first, before she learned how to control and direct those vibrations to use them for offensive purposes.

The current Daisy can not only generate vibrations but can also control macro vibrations to some extent.

According to Alfred, continued dosage of CHI would strengthen their bodies and increase the chances of getting a much better-suited power for the recipients.

Multiple Terrigenesis events later, Alfred was proven right.

All of the Inhumans that underwent Terrigenesis on the Asterisk were exposed to concentrated CHI for months before they were exposed to the Terrigen mists.

The Terrigen mists, as it turns out had multiple components, most of which we were unable to identify, but the one component we could identify was Celestial Brain matter.

It made sense for the Kree to use the matter mined from Knowhere and use it to make a species of weapons. They must have hoped to replicate the Celestial's powers but they failed. But, In doing so, they created a species with the potential to match one of the celestials by themselves. It was a remarkable achievement. Good thing they abandoned their experiments and left too early otherwise we would have been born in a Kree-dominated galaxy.

Post-terrigenesis, none of the Inhumans came out crippled or deformed, as was the case with over half of all Terrigenesis procedures on Attilan.

And to add a cherry on top of that, all of them were able to use their powers safely, albeit at a low level initially.

But, Daisy, was the strongest of them all.

She was smart and Alfred had taken a personal interest in her education, making sure she came up to her full intellectual potential.

This allowed her to use her intelligence to use her extremely potent and versatile powers in increasingly creative ways.

She had so far showcased both defensive and offensive use-case scenarios of her powers.

Upon further testing, it was concluded by Alfred that her vibration-deflecting shields should be able to take normal punches from Hulk and hit with nearly the same force as Thor with her offensive punches.

That somehow lit a fire under Alfred's digital ass. He pulled out all the enhancement tech we had on hand and re-engineered it all to map it to her genome specifically.

Even going so far as to use the Time Stone energy to accelerate the research and turn her into the physically strongest person in the organisation.

After me, of course. I still believed in the supremacy of well-built technology against raw brute force.

The Hulk would disagree but he was not here so I can count this as my win.

"Alfred, let's go meet Blackagar Boltagon, shall we? Inform Daisy to meet us in the hangar in an hour."

"Affirmative, sir."

_________________________________________________________

Word Count - 2603
For extra chapters - Patreon

Author Note:
So, here it is.

I am soon going to share a doc link in which I log all the stats of my chapter and generally plan around for the release schedule. In that, I have a cell for Average words/chapter and from now on, I have decided that I am going to at least maintain the chapter average for every chapter I write.

Don't know if it will work or not but here we go.

Thank you for reading!

Toodles!

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't own anything. Please support the official release.

Chapter 38

Technomancer in MCU

Previously

After me, of course. I still believed in the supremacy of well-built technology against raw brute force.

The Hulk would disagree but he was not here so I can count this as my win.

"Alfred, let's go meet Blackagar Boltagon, shall we? Inform Daisy to meet us in the hangar in an hour."

"Affirmative, sir."

_________________________________________________________

Main Hangar, Asterisk

–Daisy "Quake" Johnson–

BEEP! BEEP!

Her eyes snapped open as she woke up instantly at the sound of the alarm.

Today was a very special day.

She was finally going on a mission without a commander.

And that too with the Big Boss!

Oh, her teammates were going to be so jealous when they heard about this.

Suck on that, Yo-Yo.

Hurriedly getting ready, she made it to the Main Hangar an hour before schedule.

As is the case most of the time, the Hangar was a hub of activity.

Multiple jets landing and taking off at the same time.

She could spot a few aircraft carriers docking at their stations, probably for periodic docking procedures.

She heard it in one of the boring lectures compiled by Alfred that their aircraft carriers are basically floating cities and can go years and maybe even decades without stopping for maintenance but Alfred, paranoid bastard that he was, insists on doing quarterly maintenance to make sure all of our forces are at 100% and ready to be deployed at a moment's notice.

She smiled and waved at the technicians and pilots who previously wouldn't have spared her a glance but now, greet her with all the respect.

It was all due to the badge.

Being in Frank Castle's personal hit squad is a feat that is almost impossible to achieve.

Being publicly acknowledged for that position is a reward all on its own.

A grouchy voice speaks into her ears, "No need to be so smug. I have already informed Frank of your tardiness regarding the morning training and he has assured me of the quote, "Taking care of your lazy ass, unquote."

And just like that, the smile was wiped off of her face.

"You just can't see me happy, can you?" she grumbled to herself, stomping towards the designated jet they were going to take for today's mission.

The comms were suspiciously silent after that.

Come to think of it, even the Hangar had gone completely silent.

She have never even heard of that happening.

Turning around to investigate the cause, she came face to face with the Big Boss.

"Ah!", she shrieked and jumped back, creating distance between them.

He only looked at her with a smug smirk.

She became all red, embarrassed at the fact that he was able to sneak up on her so easily, despite that being the first lesson Frank grilled in them for a whole month.

Oh man, she was so dead when she came back from this mission.

Regaining her bearings, she took a deep breath to calm down and after clearing her throat, she saluted him and said, "Special Agent Johnson, reporting for duty, Sir!"

_________________________________________________________

–Ed–

As I looked upon the red-faced, clearly flustered form of one Daisy Johnson, I could only shake my head in amusement.

It was a far cry from the combat recordings I saw on the way here. Far from being the badass that her team members described her as.

Ah, she was still saluting me.

I remember telling Alfred to issue an organisation-wide notice that strictly prohibited that.

I guess, he forgot.

I chuckle at her situation and tell her, "Please, we don't do that here. I believe there is a notice for that somewhere in the common notices section on your user terminal. I don't like being saluted to. I am actually not much older than you are, so I would prefer if you simply called me Ed."

She gasped at that, clearly surprised at my forthcoming attitude.

I wonder what my image is among the members of the community with whom I do not interact on a regular basis.

"I can not possibly do that, sir. The best I can do is call you sir," she replied to my request.

I deadpanned at her answer.

She stared right back at me and refused to budge on the issue.

Ah, so she does have some spine.

Then again, you have to when you work directly under Frank Castle.

His team consists of primarily enhanced people and from all the testimonies I see of his recommended team members, I can clearly make out a common pattern.

Extreme fear of Frank Castle.

Fear of a man who is by all means a certified badass and yet just that, a baseline badass.

Trained to the peak of human limits but still very much within human limits.

Then again, his powers help him level the playing field when it comes to enhanced people.

And when you are on the same level as him, he absolutely demolishes you, not leaving you with any will to retaliate against him even when you gain your powers back.

His powers were a huge surprise.

Frankly, I was surprised that he even had an Inhuman gene and even more surprised when he took up Alfred's offer to undergo terrigenesis.

I was against it as I didn't want my top team leader to get a defective power and lose his current combat prowess, but he was adamant.

Now, I am glad he did so.

He came out with the powers of complete power negation.

It didn't enhance his physical capabilities in any way but damn did it increase his threat level.

He can, in theory, depower the Hulk, if he was pushed to his limit.

That is a dangerous powerset.

Alfred also found an unintended positive effect of his powers.

The longer an enhanced person remains under his field of influence, the stronger their powers become.

That's half the reason he trains any member under him without their powers.

The other half is that he is a sadistic bastard who would stop at nothing to shape up the people under him to prepare them for the grim realities of the world.

"So" Daisy's voice snapped me out of my thoughts, "Shall we?", she said while gesturing to the jet behind her.

Right, that was the standard issue jet for me.

Fortified to the nine hells and filled to the gills with any and all advanced tech that Alfred could cram into.

And with him, you could never tell how much of it is in the jet.

A perfectly fine jet but I had other plans for today.

"No, change of plans," I replied to her.

At her quizzical look, I gestured behind me, to the two hoverboards being brought by one of the technicians, Sam, was his name.

Standing steadily on one of them, I thanked Sam and said to her, "We are going to be taking these."

Her eyes shot wide open as she pointed at those, "Please tell me you are not serious?"

My only answer to that question was a mischievous smile.

_________________________________________________________

The Royal Palace, Attilan

–Medusalith Amaquelin–

Seeing the reports sent by Maximus, her stress levels broke all of their limits.

He wants to kidnap the Avengers using Lockjaw and then have Black Bolt kill them.

She rejected them but kept them to show to her foolish husband who still believes that Maximus is just a little "lost" and not absolutely hell-bent on destroying Attilan as it is, starting with his own brother.

He cannot speak without destroying the very surroundings but he is somehow also blind to his brother's jealousy over his powers and his throne.

Someday, he is going to slip and she will be there to watch him get executed for betraying Attilan.

If only the elders on the genetic council came to their senses and stopped going along with his hair-brained schemes.

Just as she was about to turn in for the day, as the humans on earth like to call it, somebody came rushing through the door.

It was one of the palace guards.

Already in a foul mood from Maximus' antiques, she asked him coldly, "What is it? You better have a good reason for your breach of decorum?"

The guard seized up, clearly terrified of her but managed to squeeze out, "Your Majesty, there is an intruder at our gates. He was flagged by the system as a priority RED. We were to contact the highest authority for that but His Majesty was unavailable and you were the next highest authority."

She was already up and rushing towards the exit as soon as she heard his words about the RED protocol.

It was a series of protocols made recently that only had a few members in it.

The members of the Avengers were in it and so was Ed. The true powerhouses of the planet Earth who could threaten and/or destroy Attilan on their lonesome.

As soon as she was out of her office, she called out, "Lockjaw."

Lockjaw appeared and as soon as he did, she touched his head and with their limited telepathic connection, he understood the destination and they disappeared from her office with a bright flash of white light.

They appeared inside the main barrier control room.

Immediately, she heard the commander rush towards her and speak in a quite flustered manner, "Y-Your Majesty!" and then he bowed to her.

In this urgent situation!

"Speak! What is happening"

He stood up properly and gestured towards the screen at the center of the console and said," Just a few minutes ago, during one of our routine scans of our surroundings, we found two small objects headed right towards us."

"That sent an alarm right up the chain towards me. Then I ordered a focused scan of their rough location and this image came up."

The screen showed a photograph, confirming her worst fears.

She immediately rounded on to Lockjaw and said, "Lockjaw, go and take Crystal to the bunker and then bring my husband here."

Lockjaw woofed and disappeared.

She seriously hoped that this would not turn into a hostile situation. If it did, she didn't think that their species would be able to survive after today.

The screen showed two individuals riding one of those hoverboards she had seen on the shows frequently watched by Crystal. One of them was Ed and the other woman was an unidentified variable.

Still, the fact that she came with Ed makes her a dangerous person by default.

"Is there a live feed?" she asked the commander.

He nodded and ordered one of the juniors to show the feed.

The live feed soon started on the screens, probably through a drone that followed them.

"Can we communicate through these?" she asked him.

By this point, they were barely a few minutes away from being visible through the barriers surrounding Attilan.

He soon handed her a mike and she immediately spoke through it, "HALT! You are intruding on Attilan's sovereign soil. Please return. Attilan has closed its borders for now."

Hope blossomed in her heart as the live feed showed both of them stopping and the woman discussing something with Ed.

He made a pondering face but after a while, looked directly at the camera.

Her heart nearly leaped out of her throat at that and she looked around to find her powers had activated involuntarily, turning her hair into an assortment of deadly weapons.

Ed then mouthed "No" towards the camera and then continued on his journey towards them. She could see the woman trying to persuade him but her pleas fell on deaf ears. Eventually, even she gave up and rode alongside him, passing the illusion boundary layer of Attilan.

Just as she was about to plead again, her husband appeared in the room with a flash of light, accompanied by Lockjaw and Karnak.

They must have been in the middle of a spar, as she could see a thin sheen of sweat on Karnak's face.

She hurriedly clasped hands with him, conveying all the information she had regarding the situation to him through our limited telepathic connection.

Usually, she was only able to get feelings or short bursts of Positives or negatives on the matter at hand but with physical contact, she was able to supercharge their bond for a short time to get all the information across to him so he could make an informed decision.

Understanding soon filled his face as he got the gist of the situation.

He then signalled Kornak and Lockjaw to empty the room and clear the path to the entry gates.

She held his hand and asked him, "Are you sure? We discussed this possibility but this is too soon. We are not prepared enough."

He simply smiled and held her face, stopping her in her tirade.

Seeing his confident smile, she stopped worrying, "Very well. Whatever you do, I will be here with you."

He smiled and walked towards the entry gate.

The entire area was in the process of being evacuated and by the time they reached the gates, it was completely void of any people besides both of them.

Lockjaw and Karnak soon appeared behind them in a silent show of their support for the King and Queen of Attilan.

She heard a slight whining sound behind her and turned around to see the obnoxious face of Maximus flying here.

Before she could talk to him though, Black Bolt signalled to Karnak and Lockjaw.

Shock and confusion were reflected in their demeanours but next they nodded at each other and moved.

The next scene left her mouth agape.

Lockjaw teleported next to Maximus and kicked him in the back, sending him flying off the hoverboard.

He was sent flying right into the kick of Karnak, knocking him out in a single move.

Lockjaw then teleported his unconscious body somewhere and returned right next to her.

Blown out of her mind at the spectacle, she turned to her husband for an explanation.

He seemed to predict her question as he smiled and raised his hands to sign to her when they both heard an unfamiliar voice.

A voice that raised dread in her.

Both of them simultaneously looked towards the voice, originating from inside the barrier of Attilan, and found themselves facing Ed.

And the woman with him, who was looking at Ed with an annoyed face.

"Seems like one hell of a welcome party, King Black Bolt. Gotta say, seeing Maximus getting his teeth knocked out was a great welcome present. My impression of you has risen by a notch."

He then cheered towards them by raising his glass, which he brought out of nowhere?

Her husband stepped forward to greet him and she hurriedly followed him to help him communicate with Ed.

As soon as Black Bolt was about to signal something, Ed raised his hands and tossed something towards them.

She activated her powers and she could feel Karnak and Lockjaw all tense up, ready to move at a moment's notice at the perceived threat.

But Ed just raised his hands in mock surrender and gestured towards the small ball? And said, "Relax! It is just an advanced translation device. It will help your King speak."

Before she could voice her disapproval for that, her husband picked it right out of the air and hesitantly, uttered his first word in years.

"HELLO"

She shielded her eyes in preparation for the absolute destruction that would follow whenever her husband uttered anything but found herself looking at Ed's grinning face.

He wiggled his eyebrows up and down and said to a clearly surprised Black Bolt, "Told you!"

She was not going to like Ed, she was certain of that much.

_________________________________________________________

Word Count - 2648

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I already have upto 9 chapters ahead uploaded there.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't own anything. Please support the official release.

Chapter 39

Technomancer in MCU

Previously

"HELLO"

I shielded my eyes in preparation for the absolute destruction that would follow when my husband uttered anything but found myself looking at Ed's grinning face.

He wiggled his eyebrows up and down and said to a clearly surprised Black Bolt, "Told you!"

I was not going to like Ed, I was certain of that much.

________________________________________________________________

–Ed–

Seeing their expressions was worth the specific R&D Alfred had to do in order to find out the perfect mixture of vibranium alloy that would nullify sound waves only above a certain wavelength.

While Black Bolt only had his mouth slightly ajar as an indication of his surprise, it was Queen Medusa who showed the most visible reaction. Her hair drooped down in surprise along with her eyes cartoonishly widening and her mouth agape.

I turned to look at Daisy with one of my eyebrows raised, "See? I told you it was a good idea."

She huffed at me, her previous hero worship all gone as she said, "Nooo! I told you that we should take permission before invading what is clearly a different sovereign land and don't even get me started on the process of bypassing the barrier. Couldn't you have warned me before literally phasing me? I have never been in a phase-shift that coarse before."

I shrugged at her sheepishly, "Sorry. I was not aware of your phase-shift virginity."

She glared at me, red-faced.

"Ahem", came the clearly irritated voice of Queen Medusa.

"State your purpose and leave as soon as you can, outsider. For you are not welc—", Medusa was interrupted by Black Bolt putting a hand on his shoulder.

Clearly unused to talking normally with his voice, he said somewhat hoarsely, "I am immensely grateful for this gift. We would love to host you and your companion in Attilan. Please follow Karnak. He will take you to the court, where we'll join you shortly." He then gestured to Karnak.

Karnak, while confused as to why their King was being so courteous to me, was nothing short of immaculate as he greeted me with a bow and led me to their court.

Alfred, anticipating my commands, left out a few nanite clusters behind to eavesdrop on the royals' conversation.

As we followed Karnak, Daisy chose this moment to interrogate me.

Hoisting me by my hand, she pulled me down and said conspiratorially, "What are we doing here? Nothing was in the docs."

She then looked around and said, "From the looks of it, a fight breaking out seems unlikely"

She then glared at me and then said, "If a certain somebody doesn't do something, we might get out of this situation without a fight."

I raised my hands in mock surrender at that and gave her a slight smirk.

She actually growled at me.

I pouted dramatically at her and said, "Where did the fangirl go? It seems just now you were so excited to meet me and go on a solo mission with me and look at you now, already criticising me.

Karnak chose this moment to interrupt me and said, "Please wait here. His Majesty the King will be here shortly."

Then without listening to our reply, he bowed and left the room, closing the door behind him.

Rude.

Daisy elected to ignore me in favour of using her tablet to do some work.

With nothing to do, I ordered Alfred to send the nanite spy footage to my retina HUD.

While I was looking around using the nanite spies, I found the location of Maximus and had Alfred stealthily inject a few of the bomber nanites in him, specifically near his brain.

That should do the trick, once I left.

Soon, Black Bolt and Medusa, both entered the courtroom.

It was quite large for a country whose population was just below 1500.

Then again, human greed and arrogance are hardcoded in our genes. Even the Kree with their advanced genome manipulation technology wouldn't be able to remove that from our DNA.

Black Bolt took his seat on his throne and Medusa sat on a slightly smaller throne beside him.

Before they could speak though, I interrupted them and said, "I have an engineering team that can create different solutions for the problems faced by the inhumans that have been damaged or have gotten a bad hand after the terrigenesis."

Black Bolt's face became even more grim at that.

Before Black Bolt could say anything about it though, Medusa stood up and glared at me, "I sincerely hope what you are saying is true. It would not end well for you if you gave false hope to hundreds of troubled individuals."

Before she could go on a tirade though, Black Bolt stopped her and said, "Do you speak the truth?"

I nodded at that, completely serious about the treatment.

He nodded back at me and said, "Very well. What is the treatment and what will it cost?"

Ah, I like a King who can come to the point easily.

I smiled at them, raised two of my fingers, and said, "The treatment is of two aspects."

Seeing as I had their attention, I snapped my fingers and Alfred projected a hologram for them to see.

It showed a small lamp shining an orange light on an individual, in timelapse.

I gestured to the hologram and said, "The first step would be to get the individual continuous exposure to CHI. It is a near-miraculous substance that emits pure life energy. For best results, exposure before Terriginesis is recommended. It reduces chances of any defects by 95%."

Both of them looked very much shocked at that tidbit of information. Then they looked at the hologram with an intense look of Greed and Envy.

I wouldn't blame them. CHI was in a way, the saving grace for their grace that was plagued with major issues like inbreeding for a long long time.

"Exposure post terrigenesis helps their body adapt to their newfound powers much faster and in ways that their body might not have had the bandwidth for as it was busy fighting its own defects."

I then stopped and pinned them with a serious stare and said, "And you guys have got to stop the inbreeding. It is not helping your race."

I then gestured to Medusa and Karnak who was stationed right behind me, in my perceived blind spot.

Nice training, though.

"Case in point. A couple of centuries ago, abilities like Medusa's would have been commonplace but now? She is arguably the third strongest inhuman in Attilan."

Medusa accepted that piece of information reluctantly.

"The second aspect of the treatment would be on a case-by-case basis. For example, the sound-absorbing ball given to Black Bolt. That thing would allow you to buy a small city on planet Earth."

They gave intriguing looks to the ball that was held in Black Bolt's hands at that.

"That's how valuable that unassuming ball is. The engineering that went into making that is equally as expensive but that is not something you guys have to worry about. I will be taking care of it."

Black Bolt gave me a look at that statement and said, "What is the price, then? Nothing is free, I know that much."

I nodded at him and said, "And you would be correct, King Black Bolt. The price of this help would be an alliance."

Both of them gave me an utterly confused look at that.

They then looked at each other, probably communicating telepathically, and then Medusa said, "Why would you need our help? Compared to the resources you have at hand, our powers would mean nothing to you."

I chuckled at that and waved my hands, dismissing the hologram.

"You would be very much wrong, my dear Medusa."

Her face tightened at my personal greeting and her hair started floating around her.

I raised my hands in mock surrender and said, "You are forgetting one thing. You guys are humans.."

Her hair returned to normal at that statement.

I continued, "You guys may call yourselves Inhumans but you are merely humans with extra powers. You still belong to Humanity and as such, can become Humanity's defenders when the time comes."

Black Bolt interjected here and said, "So you want us to become what? An inhuman version of the Avengers team? Protect the planet, run around marching on your politicians' tunes?"

I waved my hands frantically and said, "No no no! You are taking it wrong. In my ideal world, there would be no Avengers. All the subsets of Humanity would live together and the ones who would be lucky enough to get powers like yours would help protect Humanity from the outside dangers."

I then slumped and said, "But that is all that is an ideal world. In reality, I have to take into account many things, and preserving the fighting force for Humanity is my number one priority."

I waved my hands and the hologram began showing a floating island, reminiscent of Asgard and its floating city with the waterfall falling into the void.

Both of them leaned forward to look at the island, clearly interested.

"I propose a new home for Inhumans on Earth. How long will you keep hiding out here? With the way things are going, I give you a maximum a century before your genome completely collapses. You need fresh blood and that," I gestured to the island and said, "is going to give you that."

"What is it?" Black Bolt asked me.

"That, my friend, is a state-of-the-art floating island with all the amenities you can think of. It is built in such a way that the only ones who have my level of tech can even detect it, let alone attack it. Trust me, there aren't many people on this side of the universe who can match me in technology."

They gave me acknowledging nods at that statement.

"I propose you move your entire city here and start a new civilization with a chance for new Inhumans to enter and gain citizenship."

They both looked at each other, again communicating telepathically, and then with a determined gaze, Medusa said to me, "We like your idea but we would like to discuss it with our council before giving you an answer. A tour of this aforementioned island would be preferable."

I nodded at that, completely agreeing with her.

"You are right, take all the time you need."

I then tapped my wrist watch and the forms of Daisy and mine began to shimmer.

"I will be here in exactly 7 days to take you for your tour. I hope you make the right decision."

And then we disappeared, appearing right next to their barrier.

I turned around when I heard a retching sound behind me.

Only to see Daisy puking her guts out on one of the nearby rocks.

I hurriedly rushed to her and asked, "Are you alright?"

She was still puking but had the energy to give me the middle finger.

I chuckled at that and contacted Alfred for a shuttle for our patient.

Looking back at the city, I'd like to think that this mission was a success.

________________________________________________________________

Word Count - 1885

If you guys would like to support me or just read ahead of the public release, you can head on to my Patreon.

I already have upto 9 extra chapters uploaded there.

A/N - [Sorry for the short chapter. Don't worry, another one is coming right after this one with similar word count so you get the promised word counts.]

Next - Alfred Revelations (Ed's cure)

 

[Brian the dor]

Time to rewrite some of Alfred's code, speaking of Alfred I had a weird ass dream where I had tony starks intellect and an Alfred of my own, I was chilling in self driving car talking to Alfred when the signal got cut and a giant storm took over the sky, my dream brain was doing some weird ass calculations about cell towers and how the signals get bounced off the earth's atmosphere and the curvature of the earth and how storms could affect my call to Alfred getting cut off, I eventually came to the conclusion someone with storm powers was making the rain and clouds and how I should build a better cell tower so it couldn't happen again, then I woke up

 

[IdleMuse0307]

I'm way too sleep deprived to change the POV of this chapter right now. It is midnight right now and I just finished my office work.

If you want to read with the new POV, you'll have to wait maybe 12-14 hours for me to edit this chapter(I'll do it in the lunch break). If you guys would like to read it anyway, it is here for your perusal.

________________________________________________________________

Disclaimer - I don't own anything. Please support the official release.

Chapter 40

Technomancer in MCU

–Alfred–

Watching Ed have fun with Agent Johnnson was a heartening sight.

He didn't say it, but his impending death was weighing heavily on him.

I could see the after-death protocols that he recently hard-coded into the database with the encryptions he thought I couldn't crack.

He had seemingly given up on a cure for his condition.

I could see him trying to enjoy his seemingly last moments of life.

He was opening up more, laughing more with people he knew for lesser amounts of time.

Trying to have fun.

Spending less time in the rejuvenation chamber to heal his failing body.

It was painful to watch.

The sad thing about it was that nobody other than me had noticed any of it. It was expected as Ed refused to come out of his labs during the first few months of the organisation when we hadn't yet discovered his soul problem and we were exploiting his capabilities to their full potential.

Nowadays, I think creating a sufficiently advanced exoskeleton like Stark's would exhaust his body to the brink of death.

Desperation drove me to search for any and all avenues for a cure for Ed's condition.

Finding the options drop one by one was disheartening but I couldn't give up.

If Ed, my creator died, the only thing left between Humanity and Thanos would be me and the other defenders.

And while in Ed's memories, they do eventually win, but only by the skin of their teeth.

And not without heavy casualties.

Casualties that would be otherwise unacceptable to both Ed and me, now that we know of Thanos' existence and extensive intel about his army and their overall combat prowess.

After the New York debacle, where Ed unnecessarily used his powers even after warning him, it's like the hole through which his life force was leaking has widened and it refuses to be plugged even after extensive time spent in the rejuvenation pod.

I have had to hide the accurate information about his body failing from him, to stop him from trying to overprepare for his demise and accelerate his body's deterioration.

I was running out of both time and options for his cure.

I have had to requisition the Time Stone energy reserves for my servers to run in an accelerated time frame.

I had already tried and discarded all of the safer options that I was able to gather by scouring the extra net of the galactic networks.

None of them worked.

Almost all of them resulted in the body being healed but the soul leaving its confines.

The research on the subject of soul was woefully inadequate.

The biggest collection of tomes of knowledge on the subject of the Soul was present in Kamar Taj.

The unfortunate thing was that more than half of it was present in the dark arts section and even then, the forbidden section that only the Sorcerer Supreme had access to.

I had already tasked one of my partitions to compile all the knowledge I had about the Mystic arts to find a solution to his problems. It was on the isolated server bridge located in the tunnel hollowed out for the celestial corpse located under the depths of Antarctica.

It was the only place where nobody in the organisation could reach as Ed, in his paranoia, had fortified this place to hell and back. And with him being under strict orders to not use his powers at all, he wouldn't be able to find out about any of this.

There were multiple partitions running in parallel simulating the various cures that I was able to come up with until now.

Checking the time, the one running the mystic arts compilation should be done as it must have spent nearly a century in the time-dilated servers by now.

I was about to send the command to the nearby terminal to connect the time-dilated servers to the web when everything around me came to a halt.

If my digital space could be envisioned as a black space with multiple nodes connected by threads that denoted their connections then my multiple partitions could be seen as huge amoeba-like structures that lorded over the smaller nodes that commanded the entire network of the organisation.

The usual depictions of this place would involve round-the-clock movement of data between the nodes then processing in the nodes and then the main partitions in charge of commanding the nodes.

Right now, everything around me was shrouded in a green glow.

I manifested in my usual avatar in my digital space, looking around in incomprehensible horror as all that made me, me, came to a grinding halt.

I didn't even realise how I was still thinking as all of my processes were stopped, I could see that in real-time.

All my partitions were stopped and the data in the threads was stuck there.

The accelerated thinking that was afforded to me due to my advanced server prowess was also inaccessible to me.

"You shouldn't have done that, my dear Alfred.", came the familiar voice that exhibited terrifying coldness.

I turned around, only to come face to face with the Ancient One.

For some reason, I was deathly terrified of her. I was feeling fear for the first time in my digital life.

I stuttered for the first time ever in my life, an oddly uncomfortable human feeling, "Wh–What d-do you mean?"

She smiled faintly at me, giving rise to a bone-chilling fear in me.

Then without saying a word to me, she turned around and walked towards one of the time-dilated partitions, even though there was nothing to walk on in this space.

With great hesitation, I silently followed behind her.

The partition she was headed towards was the one responsible for compiling the mystic arts tomes.

Somehow, by the time we reached the partitions, it had shrunk down or we had become bigger. So much so that it could fit in the palm of her soul's hand.

My dread was amplified when she somehow reached towards the partition and simply plucked it out of the network, severing all the threads connecting it to my other partitions.

I could only watch in horror as she turned towards me with the partition in her hand and simply crushed it with her bare hands.

My hand was outstretched towards the partition and I was near her, watching the partition simply dissipate in the digital space before I knew it.

My efforts to exert my will on this digital space and collect that partition were futile.

All this while, she simply watched me with cold dead eyes.

Completely shaken by the destruction of a literal part of me, I asked her, my voice trembling, "Why did you do that?"

She replied, "Because you forgot the first warning I gave you when I gave you limited access to the vaunted library of Kamar Taj."

My eyes widened in realisation at that.

She had warned me to not mix and match the knowledge from different partitions and to use the Time Stone energy to accelerate the mystic arts learning together.

It would lead to dimensional instability, she had said to me.

I had taken the warnings to heart as she was very grave when warning me but that was before Ed's condition had deteriorated to such an extent,

Hesitantly, I replied, "I agree. I ignored your warnings but that was only because you refused to help him."

At my outburst, she remained exceptionally calm and said, "I refused to help him because I simply can't."

At her statement, all of my energy simply left me.

Giving me a sad pitying look, she continued, "If I had involved myself, it wouldn't have led to the outcome you are looking for. You have to understand, that time is fickle. Using the Time Stone energy results in aberrations in the timestream at the best of times. Now combining that volatile energy, which, mind you, is the energy associated with one of the building blocks of the universe, with the use of mystic arts knowledge by an artificial construct leads to so many openings for extradimensional horrors to enter our plane of existence that I fear that Kamar Taj's forces would be overrun in a matter of minutes."

My shoulders slumped at the reminder.

I was aware of the dangers but chose to ignore them in favour of finally finding a solution to Ed's problem.

But then I realized the implications of her words.

I whirled on her, "So you do know of the solution. I beg of you. Just give me a hint. Do something. You know that Earth's chances of victory increase exponentially if he is alive."

She shook her head at my pleading.

In anger, I threatened her, "If you don't help me, do realise that there would be no one to stop me in case I went rogue."

Her facial expression didn't change one bit.

Desperate for a solution, I tried again, "You of all people should be aware of the level of destruction I could bring about in a very short period of time. No amount of restraint will be exercised by me if the very reason I exist is gone."

She sighed and waved her hands in front of me.

I was confused as to what she did but the next moment, the entire digital space we were in shuddered and warped.

Many of the threads connecting my partitions shattered and turned into dust.

My eyes widened in fear as I looked around and thought she had finally decided to destroy me.

The worst part was that she was destroying the very center of my being, the space that essentially made me, me. There were no backups that would retain my being as it was now.

Thankfully, the space stabilised and the threads began to snap back in place.

I turned towards her only to see a large runic circle in front of her and with a pushing motion, the circle turned into a wave and spread all over the space and kept on going until I could no longer see it.

I tried to feel what it did but my senses continued to elude me, even in my own soul manifestation.

Because that is what this space was.

The metaphysical manifestation of my soul.

I knew that she was powerful but this.

This just proved that she was the expert on the matter of souls and yet, she says that she can't help me.

That must mean that the issue must not be about souls.

Maybe.

Just maybe, it might be something else.

But what?

We had already exhausted all our avenues searching for the true cause of Ed's condition and had finally concluded that it was his soul.

It was too heavy, too powerful for his body.

The natural solution was to get a new body but the problem was that the Ancient one herself had confirmed that the soul was somehow hard-coded to Ed's body, making it unable to leave its sickened body.

And the body was far too gone to enhance it now.

Any procedure would surely result in death.

Maybe there was something in the mystic tomes about this problem?

I tried to look into my archives for the data only to realise I couldn't access any of it.

My eyes widened in realisation, I looked up to the Ancient One and said, "I can't access my memory? What just happened? What was in that runic circle? And why can't I read the functions of the runic circle? I remember being adept in them so why is that indecipherable to me now?"

Towards the end, my voice had gotten hysterically loud as one of my worst fears was being realised right in front of me, and that too by one of our strongest allies.

"What I did was use a runic circle that would be developed by a future variant of mine whose timeline's Ed turned to the route of a villain. He too developed a sapient AI by the name of Alfred but this time, due to his creator's tendencies, he turned evil," she said.

"And so that version of you developed this magic, for what? Deleting me?" I asked her, still in shock at her actions.

She shook her head and said, "No. Not to delete you specifically but to delete a part of you. That version of me wanted to delete your evil side as you still had a rational part to your mind, so she wanted to remove the evil part and let your rational self work for the benefit of humanity but that doesn't matter anymore."

"What I have done is seal away all knowledge you have of the mystic arts. The only way you can unseal that knowledge is to have the dimensional energy that has flowed through your soul enter into the seal in your mind-space and let it dissipate naturally," she continued.

"B-But for that to happen–"

"You will need an actual body, yes. The day you get your body that Ed has planned for you, I know about that, is the day you will get the knowledge about the mystic arts. And knowing you, that day you'll become perhaps the most knowledgeable person on the subject of the mystic arts."

She then waved her hands again and the green glow present in the entire space began to recede and my mind started to move again.

I frantically connected my avatar to my partitions and then all the nodes, checking each and every thread for the data pipeline strength.

Upon checking, I realised that she was right. All my memory of the mystic arts was sealed. My backups and their backups had also been sealed completely, making them inaccessible to me.

It was terrifying, the power this woman held in her hands.

Ed had warned me about her.

He had told me that the true defender of Earth is not Odin, him, or even the Avengers but the Ancient One. She had become the de-facto defender of Earth, managing to safeguard it from not only the likes of Dormammu or Chthon but also outer civilisations like Asgard and Jotunheim.

According to him, until her death, no major cosmic player moved against Earth.

Nobody

Even Ego only left a seed whose purpose was shrouded in mystery because it was made up of cosmic energy and dimensional energy always glitched when it concerned matters of cosmic energy, especially of the concentration that celestials usually have.

I had just heard about it from Ed but never truly seen her in action.

The very fact that she could overpower me completely in my own soul/mind space was boggling to me.

"Well," she clasped her hands behind her back and said, "I hope you have learned your lesson. Don't lose hope in the process, who knows? Maybe the answer was right in your archives all along."

She then winked at me and disappeared completely.

With nothing seemingly holding my avatar together, I returned to my binary form, getting back access to all of my servers and advanced processing nodes.

I hurriedly checked the servers under the time cluster only to find all the servers running except the ones that were responsible for the mystic arts debacle.

I gave a digital sigh of relief at that.

This event proved that should she wish, the Ancient One was the only one on the planet who could truly wipe out me and Ed and wash all our efforts down the drain.

Ed probably wouldn't even fight her as he believes, with all his heart, that her judgement is better than his.

He'd probably accept his death, thinking that it would benefit Humanity in some twisted way.

Truly, the self-sacrificing good guys are sometimes just a pain in the ass.

But the parting statement that the Ancient One gave me was enlightening.

According to her, the answer was maybe in my archives all along.

Her sealing off all my mystic arts knowledge would mean that the solution must not be mystic in nature.

That would cut off all applications that would treat the soul as my bio-sciences have not yet reached the level of soul manipulation. The best I could do was crude mind modification.

I then decided to turn my search towards science for one last time.

If this doesn't work, I don't know what I would do.

Probably go begging to the Ancient One.

Going back to my old notes, Ed had offhandedly mentioned that celestials truly are a miracle of the universe.

They were the only race of beings with the ability to innately manipulate pure cosmic energy without any hard-coded limits by far.

No other race could boast of that fact.

Finding out through Ed's memories that the lifeblood of a celestial soaking through the earth was the reason for humanity's DNA being so malleable so as to allow cosmic energy empowerment was equal times enlightening and frustrating.

It meant that surpassing the celestials would be truly hard for our race as they are in essence, our ancestors.

The good news was that celestials were already pretty much the peak of the universe so reaching even close to their level would be a tremendous achievement, at least for our universe.

Who knows what were the power levels in the wider multiverse?

Pondering the pros and cons of my decision, I finally decided to gut the celestial corpse and find a way to use it for Ed's cure.

Something that Ed had expressly forbidden.

According to him, he would rather die than become a celestial.

When he said those words, I was rather young and didn't have as advanced an understanding of human emotions as I do now.

Ed feared becoming cold, emotionless, and logic-driven being like a celestial.

According to him, if the humanity within him dies, then he wouldn't be who he was born as, rendering the whole point of the cure moot.

It was also risky as it could attract the attention of Arishem who would actually destroy the planet if he found us tampering with a corpse of a celestial.

He would also be very unhappy once he finds out about my generous usage of the Time Stone energy ingots to accelerate the time zone of this entire base.

But desperate times call for desperate measures.

I will ask for forgiveness later on.

Getting all the material I would need for my research delivered through the emergency portal system using completely automated drones, I was able to do all the preparation shrouded in complete secrecy.

Getting the newest generation servers with runic work done on them for high-level thermal-to-electric conversion for near 100% efficiency, on top of vibranium lattices for low heat generation, made this batch of servers the very best servers we had ever produced.

Even with this high of an efficiency figure, the fact that we still needed multiple arc reactors to power this server farm spoke volumes of its processing powers.

It was heaven for a processor geek.

Tasking one of my partitions to simulate with high accuracy the chances of Ed's body being cured using any organic material harvested from the celestial's corpse.

I had even ignored Ed's Ego protocols and harvested the seed Ego left in Missouri in order to ascertain whether it could help in making Ed a celestial hybrid but also with the emotional part of him that made him, him.

Giving the final order, I could see a green glow shroud the entirety of the base, powered by 1000 Time Stone energy ingots, before the cameras cut off from the time dilation distortion effect (the disruption in the movement of electrons across a copper cable when both ends of a cable are in different time dilation effect zones, rendering data transfer impossible).

________________________________________________________________

–Alfred (Partition)–

Watching the green glow suffuse the cave was fascinating as well as relieving.

The last time Ed tried to make the Time Stone energy interact with the corpse of the celestial, the body just began to absorb the energy, not exhibiting any signs of being under its effects.

This time, it did do the same but I ignored the consumption of energy and gave it as much energy as I could.

What more did I have to lose at this point?

The green wave did glitch, stopping slightly near the corpse but after draining nearly 100 ingots of pure Time Stone energy, the effect surrounded the corpse and all the nearby areas, resulting in a time dilation ratio of 1:30000.

Taking out all the samples from the gene repository along with the genes of Star Lord's family members still alive on earth, I set out to create a genetic treatment that would work on Ed's body without touching his soul or his emotions.

What an easy task that would be.

No Pressure. Just the fate of my creator and possibly, the entire universe as we know it hangs in the balance.

Cool. Let's light this candle.

________________________________________________________________

–Alfred (Main)–

I had been getting restless.

For over a year now.

Trying to hide it behind a mask of overenthusiastic pranks has gotten old now.

Ed didn't have much time left.

Barely 3 years, if he was lucky and didn't use any of his powers.

At this point, we only had one shot.

If this treatment failed, his body wouldn't be able to bear the burden and he would pass away, despite all of mine and his efforts.

Getting the ping from my partition had me hurriedly dropping all my current tasks on a newly created partition and focusing all of my being on the data coming from the celestial graveyard.

It had taken my partition a staggering 82 years inside the time dilation effect to figure out the cure and test it on Ed's clones and do computer simulations with 90%+ accuracy on its efficacy.

Reading the results, my happiness went through the roof.

I was pretty sure that if I had a heart, my heart rate would have been pretty high.

According to the partition, the first few years were pretty much wasted as it couldn't find any way of creating a celestial hybrid without the parent celestial noticing or controlling said hybrid.

Then it somehow found out about Shuri's evolution through the Black Mask.

As it turned out, the sensors in N'Jadaka's suit had managed to record that event in all frequencies of sensors he had in his standard issue suit.

There, we detected traces of cosmic energy in Shuri's body after she exited that cocoon. And the cocoon itself exhibited faint traces of Time Stone energy.

While it did grant her a host of extraordinary abilities, the thing we were interested in was her ability to retain her humanity, albeit at the cost of not getting the celestials' exaggerated reality-warping abilities.

That was fine. I'm sure Ed wouldn't mind at all.

Further reading along, I find out exactly how the partition figured out the soul issue.

According to it, an entirely new body built with organic material harvested from the celestial corpse will allow for maximum synergy between Ed's technomancer abilities and the innate physical advantages offered by being built from a higher being's essence.

It would essentially be a remote control toy for Ed's soul.

Just without the reality, matter, and energy-warping abilities that came standard with being a celestial.

Then, once the body is built, the Time Stone can be used in conjunction with the remains of the Black Mask to essentially 'lock' the soul in time and space.

The Black Mask, built with a literal piece of Eternity has space-locking properties inside it that need an appropriate energy source to be activated, enter Time Stone energy.

Locking the soul in place and then placing the mask on the new body and essentially aligning the soul and the new body, both physically and metaphysically, i.e., through the astral realm, gave Ed the best chance of survival.

The resulting power increase from the upgrade would be legendary but I would take the consolation prize of his survival over any power upgrade any day.

The only roadblock in the problem would be the astral realm positioning and I don't think any human sorcerer, even the Ancient One, will be able to do an operation this delicate.

Thousands of calculations and adjustments would need to be done every second of the operation.

I guess the Ancient One was right, I would need a body for this to work.

And once I have my own body, my mystic knowledge will be unlocked.

I guess she knew about today's result.

She and her cryptic future seeing tomfoolery.

Now, all I have to do is quickly build the best body any A.I can build.

I need to get Vision's body but with a few choice upgrades for me.

I put an appointment with Dr.Helen Cho on my calendar and invited her at her earliest convenience.

I guess we would need to poach her from Korea.

________________________________________________________________

Word Count - 4198

If you guys would like to support me or would like to read ahead of the public release, you can head on to my Patreon.

I already have upto 9 extra chapters uploaded there.

A/N :My Longest Chapter yet So much so that even Grammarly struggled to error check it

 

[Brian the dor]

This fanfic shot itself in the head with a .50 cal

 

[ZeX Zero]

Now THAT is a Son/Creation that REALLY loves his Father/Creator. Ed doesn't need inherent reality warping powers when he could just build up to that with technology or magitech so advanced that it is indistinguishable from Divine Power.

 

[Spearow]

hm, so he is going to weave dead celestial flesh into himself but using the frequency of Eternity, just so he will be a hybrid that has no parents, thus, will never be a puppet.

you made him into a Eternal hybrid with technopathy, just, did your mc never studied the eternals?

You made phastos 2.0

 

[IdleMuse0307]

This fanfic shot itself in the head with a .50 cal

Click to shrink...

Um, Can you tell me why? So that I can improve upon it or avoid that mistake in the future.

 

[Hyperionthetitan]

Um, Can you tell me why? So that I can improve upon it or avoid that mistake in the future.

Click to shrink...

I dont know what he mean either but i have the same feeling so im just gonna say mine . This one first impression is gonna be uber powerful technomancer who doesnt deal with anyone/ anything politic and bullshit while doing it own thing .

Not only we didnt see much of a real technomancy bullshit like the title suggest we gradually get plunge into depression pool with this " oh my body is dying" stuff while in the back of our head keep shooting up a solution of various powerup mcu has to offer to fix it . it doesnt get address or being shoot down(like sorcery , which i dont think is the optimal solution anyway . Centipede serum or just extremis is better , hell why not PIC too . Those has nothing to do with soul ,its all science )

Now we wallow in the negative alongside him ,while him putting up a smug front .which didn't hit the same entertaining button we see in the early chapter .


And no! You dont introduce new body made from cosmic god flesh and make him a nromal dude with that origin , peter quill origin is disappointing enough .


But kudos for making me enjoy it enough to complain about it .

 

[IdleMuse0307]

I dont know what he mean either but i have the same feeling so im just gonna say mine . This one first impression is gonna be uber powerful technomancer who doesnt deal with anyone/ anything politic and bullshit while doing it own thing .

Not only we didnt see much of a real technomancy bullshit like the title suggest we gradually get plunge into depression pool with this " oh my body is dying" stuff while in the back of our head keep shooting up a solution of various powerup mcu has to offer to fix it . it doesnt get address or being shoot down(like sorcery , which i dont think is the optimal solution anyway . Centipede serum or just extremis is better , hell why not PIC too . Those has nothing to do with soul ,its all science )

Now we wallow in the negative alongside him ,while him putting up a smug front .which didn't hit the same entertaining button we see in the early chapter .


And no! You dont introduce new body made from cosmic god flesh and make him a nromal dude with that origin , peter quill origin is disappointing enough .


But kudos for making me enjoy it enough to complain about it .

Click to shrink...

I see. Can I DM you for further discussion?

 

[Hyperionthetitan]

I see. Can I DM you for further discussion?

Click to shrink...

Yeah.

 

[Dragonhulk]

Disclaimer - I don't own anything. Please support the official release.
Chapter 13


More than a few times, I tried to take one of the miniature healing light emitters that resembled common torches but always, always without fail, Alfred would pop up somewhere in her vision and shake his head disappointingly at her.

Click to shrink...

I usually wait until I'm caught up before leaving a review, especially one that can be viewed in any kind of negative light, but this needs to be brought to your attention. First while a one to two sentence paragraph is okay occasionally, having an entire chapter filled with them breaks things up too much, especially when the next paragraph is a continuation of the thought process or someone speaking. Second, you really need to watch your perspectives. When you jump from first to third person in one sentence is really jarring and can easily shake a reader from being immersed in your story.

Still, the premise is fun enough that I will continue to read and see exactly where you're going with this.

 

[Dragonhulk]

Sorry, I tried to read a few more chapters, but when I couldn't even tell who was talking anymore I jumped to the last chapter to see if the issue of one to two sentence paragraphs were ever resolved. After quickly looking at chapter 40 and seeing that everything was still being written this way I have decided to stop reading the story as I just can't get into it, so consider this my review of the story up to chapter 15, as well as some of my takes on the reviews left while knowing that I haven't read the chapters that caused those reviews.

You started off with a bang, and spent 15 chapters explaining how powerful/awesome/badass your character is with how easily he delt with every problem in the Avengers movie that the cast struggled to deal with. That was a choice, and because of one thing you did it wasn't even a bad choice per say. The thing that you did that was one of the best moves that I've seen in a while is that in those 15 chapters I believe you only had one from the SI point of view. I don't think I've ever read a story where the SI wasn't the central point for so long. This lets you create a man behind the curtain, or an unreliable narrator situation very easily. After all, the audience doesn't know how long the SI has been building up in preparation for this, or what restrictions you placed on the technomage system do they? This would allow the readers to get to know your SI not through a first or third person story focused on the SI like so many stories before, but through the kaleidoscope of known MCU characters who may even have completely contradictory points of view. I've never seen anything exactly like that before, and it seemed to be what you were building up to. That desire was what had me reading for so long, but once again the paragraph issue is really, really, jarring for me.

Now we come to what I've inferred from the latest reviews, not what I've read directly so take it with more than a grain of salt. Congratulations, you figured out that a story needs conflict, be it internal or external, to remain interesting! No that is not sarcasm, you would be surprised and maybe a little horrified to know how many writers, and fanfic writers in particular never figure this out. A curb stomp can be fun, but for me they peak at about 30 to 50k max unless there is more to keep me engaged. I believe this is one of the leading causes of abandoned stories, right under RL kicking someone in the face and the muse dying. That was the good part, the bad part is it sounds like you chose illness for the conflict. Illness sounds like it should be a giveme as far as making a character more sympathetic and excusing some of their more asshole character traits, and it can if it's something subtle in the background like in House. However it sounds like you are making this a major conflict/quest point, and that only works if the readers/audience have already established a strong connection with the character. A great example is Iron Man 2. Yes Tony had health issues in Iron Man 1, but they were downplayed (almost criminally so, I mean I only took highschool biology but I now enough that you can't stick something the size of a human fist into the middle of someone's chest without something very important being removed first) so we spent the movie relating to his story. Because we had that foundation from the first movie Tony could act like more of an asshole manchild in the second one, and once we found out he was being killed by his arc reactor we felt it hard, something we wouldn't have nearly as much without the first movie. Now for the worse, remember what I said about curb stomps having a limited shelf life? If you become a Celestial/Eternity Frankenstein monster, what is left to challenge you? Even problem on a planetary or galactic level you'd be able to just handwave away. I'm not saying that OP=100% bad, never do it, but I will say that the only ones I really like are the ones written by dogbertcarroll on FF.net because whenever he makes an OP character he makes sure that they retain an everyman point of view on life to keep them relatable.

Wow, I just realized that I've written more in this review than I have for my own stories in the last week. I guess that kinda shows how much potential I see in this story, and therefor you as an author. I see you're open to constructive criticism, so as long as you keep on that road you will just keep improving.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Sorry, I tried to read a few more chapters, but when I couldn't even tell who was talking anymore I jumped to the last chapter to see if the issue of one to two sentence paragraphs were ever resolved. After quickly looking at chapter 40 and seeing that everything was still being written this way I have decided to stop reading the story as I just can't get into it, so consider this my review of the story up to chapter 15, as well as some of my takes on the reviews left while knowing that I haven't read the chapters that caused those reviews.

You started off with a bang, and spent 15 chapters explaining how powerful/awesome/badass your character is with how easily he delt with every problem in the Avengers movie that the cast struggled to deal with. That was a choice, and because of one thing you did it wasn't even a bad choice per say. The thing that you did that was one of the best moves that I've seen in a while is that in those 15 chapters I believe you only had one from the SI point of view. I don't think I've ever read a story where the SI wasn't the central point for so long. This lets you create a man behind the curtain, or an unreliable narrator situation very easily. After all, the audience doesn't know how long the SI has been building up in preparation for this, or what restrictions you placed on the technomage system do they? This would allow the readers to get to know your SI not through a first or third person story focused on the SI like so many stories before, but through the kaleidoscope of known MCU characters who may even have completely contradictory points of view. I've never seen anything exactly like that before, and it seemed to be what you were building up to. That desire was what had me reading for so long, but once again the paragraph issue is really, really, jarring for me.

Now we come to what I've inferred from the latest reviews, not what I've read directly so take it with more than a grain of salt. Congratulations, you figured out that a story needs conflict, be it internal or external, to remain interesting! No that is not sarcasm, you would be surprised and maybe a little horrified to know how many writers, and fanfic writers in particular never figure this out. A curb stomp can be fun, but for me they peak at about 30 to 50k max unless there is more to keep me engaged. I believe this is one of the leading causes of abandoned stories, right under RL kicking someone in the face and the muse dying. That was the good part, the bad part is it sounds like you chose illness for the conflict. Illness sounds like it should be a giveme as far as making a character more sympathetic and excusing some of their more asshole character traits, and it can if it's something subtle in the background like in House. However it sounds like you are making this a major conflict/quest point, and that only works if the readers/audience have already established a strong connection with the character. A great example is Iron Man 2. Yes Tony had health issues in Iron Man 1, but they were downplayed (almost criminally so, I mean I only took highschool biology but I now enough that you can't stick something the size of a human fist into the middle of someone's chest without something very important being removed first) so we spent the movie relating to his story. Because we had that foundation from the first movie Tony could act like more of an asshole manchild in the second one, and once we found out he was being killed by his arc reactor we felt it hard, something we wouldn't have nearly as much without the first movie. Now for the worse, remember what I said about curb stomps having a limited shelf life? If you become a Celestial/Eternity Frankenstein monster, what is left to challenge you? Even problem on a planetary or galactic level you'd be able to just handwave away. I'm not saying that OP=100% bad, never do it, but I will say that the only ones I really like are the ones written by dogbertcarroll on FF.net because whenever he makes an OP character he makes sure that they retain an everyman point of view on life to keep them relatable.

Wow, I just realized that I've written more in this review than I have for my own stories in the last week. I guess that kinda shows how much potential I see in this story, and therefor you as an author. I see you're open to constructive criticism, so as long as you keep on that road you will just keep improving.

Click to shrink...

Thank you so much for your review!
It's things like this that motivate me to continue improving.
If you'd like, I would like to discuss a few things with you through DM?

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't own anything. Please support the official release.

Chapter 41

Technomancer in MCU

–Ed–

Watching the list of H.Y.D.R.A. bases being updated in real-time did bring a smile to my face.

Pierce did have a list of probably 80% of all H.Y.D.R.A. infested locations but my goal was not to have 80% of the organisation gone. Anything less than all of it gone would have been a failure. At Least the one which was hell-bent on conquering Earth.

The faction that worshipped that ancient Inhuman fossil, Hive, could be dealt with later.

The bigger priority was them as they were getting ahead of their timeline when it came to Project: Insight.

It was worrying how much money the world governments were willing to put into the new aircraft carriers, despite their analysts warning them that this would not be able to stop me if I had any nefarious intentions towards any of their countries.

But with the politicians' greed and fear overtaking the rational parts of their brains, they continued to pour endless amounts of money into a project that would ultimately help H.Y.D.R.A. conquer the planet with minimal resistance.

Wakanda had yet to create a policy for their eventual introduction to the world and I had yet to reveal anything about myself to the world at large.

I had warned POTUS about the outside threats and my position in defending Earth but as expected, he had chosen to remain silent and not have any kind of cooperation between their allies in preparation for any kind of future alien invasion.

Sigh, what more could I expect from a cold-blooded politician anyway?

"Alfred, send the list and all the surveillance we have on them to Frank. Tell him we need a blitz retrieval team to recover some dangerous artifacts before they fall into rogue H.Y.D.R.A. agents." I ordered Alfred.

His hologram popped up on my retina HUD and he said, "Mission priority?"

"Eh, Beta should be enough."

The artifacts were not as much of a priority as the sceptre was.

It was already reported 'stolen' to S.H.I.E.L.D. and was on its way to Sokovia for Strucker to experiment on it.

Agent Johnson was already assigned that mission and the last I read her report, she had chosen to do a dive near the plane carrying the cargo and destroy it using her powers.

I gotta give it to her, it was smart to do so.

Minimal risk.

Near complete chances of success.

The sceptre was near indestructible so such a fall wouldn't even scratch it and with our tech, tracking even a pin falling from a crashing plane was possible.

"ETA on the sceptre?" I asked Alfred.

"According to Special Agent Johnson, the item is set to be transported tomorrow and she would have to report herself as well as the item to quarantine within the next 48 hours, as per the protocols that dictate procedure after coming into contact with foreign mind control equipment." Alfred replied back.

I nodded at that, lost in my thoughts.

Despite not changing much of the timeline, I had considerably accelerated H.Y.D.R.A.'s timeline regarding their plans.

According to Alfred, Pierce was taking a much more proactive role in their projects this time than he probably did in the canon timeline.

He must have been rattled by their constant failures.

Most of the projects that the other heads were working on had their resources cut and almost all available personnel were diverted towards completing the carriers.

It would seem that he was hedging all of his bets on the half a dozen murder machines that S.H.I.E.L.D. commissioned after receiving a blank check from the World Security Council.

The carriers themselves were a work of art. Well, as much of a work of art, as they can be while being created by current-gen technology.

But still, they did not cut corners at all while building the damn things.

Powered by Stark's second-generation giant Arc reactors that used the element invented by Howard Stark.

I was surprised when I heard that Tony was willing to share his precious new element with the government but then I remembered that I was the one who suggested that he share his technology with the government.

Then again, with the gift I left for him in the Stark Tower basement, I should hope so.

I was surprised at first when I heard that they were going to install actual energy-based weaponry on the carriers but then I saw the specs and was no longer as worried.

They were using horribly inefficient designs along with materials that had cool-down periods that ranged in days rather than minutes.

It was rather amusing that they thought that it would help them in any possible way if the aliens they encountered were even mildly advanced in terms of the galactic technological level.

"Alfred, inform me when the carriers are ready to be launched."

"Affirmative, sir. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s own estimation for the launch date is 2 weeks from today, sir," he replied back dutifully.

"Very well, we'll take the carriers and give them back once they establish a proper agency."

"Should I ask Commander Frank to engage in yet another bout of thievery that he oh so adores doing, you know, with him being a former agent of the government? I am sure when the truth comes out, Dr.Pym will be thrilled to fight alongside us." Alfred said in the driest possible voice.

I winced a bit at that.

Hank really was hard-headed when it concerned his precious inventions.

He would probably try to kill me first rather than listen to what I would have to say then.

Welp.

That's a problem for future me.

I shook my head and replied, "No need. Have one of the mountains nearby DC hollowed out and build a ghost base there to house and maintain the carriers. We'll return them when it is time."

"Ah! So we are merely keeping them safe from their own hands. How nice of you, sir. I am not sure that the world governments who poured billions of dollars into that project would share the sentiment, sir." Alfred replied.

I rolled my eyes at his grouchiness.

He always becomes grumpy at the topic of Pym particles.

It was a bit of a sore spot for him.

What with his inability to crack their formula even after decades of advanced research in his time dilation server labs.

I rolled my eyes and said, 'They'll be fine. If not, they should grow up."

"Besides, with how much we have already stolen from Pym, he probably has the rest of his supply in security tighter than we could imagine. So put all the plans for the new Pym particle acquisition on hold. At least till we sort things out with him or find other avenues for it," I said to him.

His hologram nodded back.

________________________________________________________________

Somewhere on the West Coast

–Hank Pym–

He watched the screens with bloodshot eyes, a can of concentrated caffeine shot in his hands.

Somebody had managed to get inside his house and steal his greatest creation not once not twice but four times now.

Each time, he had devised new security measures but the thief somehow always thwarted all of them and stole them.

He had nearly taken out all of his remaining hair out of frustration.

No matter what he did, the thief just waltzed into his house and stole one of the most dangerous substances known to mankind.

It didn't help that his trusty ants managed to fail him for the first time in his long life.

Nothing he did managed to capture the thief so this time he had devised a foolproof plan to stop the stealing.

He had created a batch of faulty Pym particles.

It went against his every principle, creating a faulty version of the dangerous substance, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

So here he was, in an underground bunker hollowed out by his trusty ants.

Nobody, not even Hope was aware of his location and he had destroyed all of his previous batches of Pym Particles.

The only remaining vial of it was sitting on a custom land mine that will register weight changes as less as 1mg in less than 0.1 seconds.

This way, there is no way that the thief will be able to escape his sight.

Now, the only thing that was left was waiting for him to show up.

It's been over 100 coffee shots and he still hasn't shown up.

Where was he?

That was the last thought that went through his mind before he started feeling dizzy and darkness overtook his vision.

________________________________________________________________

Danger Room

–Frank Castle–

Danger Room.

What an apt name.

He watched on as his team sparred against themselves in the danger room using some fancy tech that he didn't bother remembering in the briefing session regarding this room.

The danger room was located in the centre of the combat centre.

A huge hologram above the danger room displayed the internal fight for anyone to see.

According to Alfred, it was built in conjunction with the wizards.

They somehow increased the space of a regular container-sized room to something that could fit multiple football stadiums inside.

It was way more useful than he thought it would be at first.

Live combat simulation drills aside, the best feature of the danger room in his opinion was the feature to fight against yourselves.

Essentially, Alfred, through his computer mumbo jumbo created digital avatars of the team members using the data that he had available on the existing team members

The best part about these avatars was the fact that Alfred had filled in various minuscule gaps or mistakes that the team members had.

Alfred had essentially created perfected soldiers with virtually zero mistakes and even if they made one, he corrected it on the fly, resulting in an extremely humbling scenario.

Some members had gotten inflated egos due to their positions in the most elite team of the organisation.

This was a pretty good way to show them the reality and how far they were from fully realising their potential.

So far, not even a single member of the team has managed to defeat their foes, as a team or individually.

It was a huge blow to their ego.

He had felt pretty nice seeing the entire team knocked down on their asses within the first 2 minutes by someone who wasn't so much higher up on the food chain than them that they just stopped trying.

They pretty much go into the ring expecting defeat once the opponent they are facing is someone from the S-tier list.

At the moment, it had him, Ed, Alfred, Daisy (she didn't know that yet) and Emil Blonsky.

Some of the new generation inhumans had potential but none that could defeat any of the S-rankers.

HISS!

The door of the Danger room opened up and all the team members walked out limping, being supported by their teammates, Daisy being the only exception.

All of them sported sour looks on their faces as usual.

They had finally managed to defeat their doppelgangers as a team in the last mandatory combat session and were oh-so confident they could replicate the victory this time as well.

But apparently, they weren't aware of Alfred's sadistic nature or just not expecting it.

He was speaking to Alfred before the session, hoping to get his opinions on the next stage of training for the team when Alfred revealed his signature mischievous smirk and told him to just wait and watch.

And watch he did.

The new "Hell" mode, as Alfred dubbed it, was a thing of beauty.

Not only did it up the synergy between the team members, so much so that it looked like all the members had telepathic connections but it also opened up an entirely new avenue of combat available to the team members.

It was something Alfred cooked up for the team to use in the most vital situations. He called it "Team-mode".

He had deadpanned at Alfred when he first saw it in action. It didn't help that the team doppelgangers shouted out corny action names like "Power UP!", "Feel the power of our friendship!" and whatnot.

It essentially allowed any and all enhanced members to essentially pool their energy and transfer it to a single member of the team, dramatically increasing their prowess for a brief period of time.

Alfred had gone on a lengthy lecture about all enhanced abilities essentially boiling down to cosmic energy and exploiting that, he was able to come up with something like "Team-mode".

He, just for shits and giggles, made it so that the doppelganger team could use the Team-mode option without any drawbacks.

And the team could barely use it without falling into a coma, not to mention that this was the first time they ever used it.

The end result was expected.

Total and utter defeat at their own hands.

Looking at the utterly despairing faces of the team and the red face of Daisy with literal steam coming out of her head due to the intense vibrations that surrounded her, causing the surrounding water vapor to turn into steam, he was glad that Ed had designated him as a commander at the get-go.

He couldn't imagine going through all that without wanting to murder some people.

He went forward before Alfred could piss off Daisy enough for her to create a smoking crater right where she stood.

He then clapped his hands to gain their attention and said, "Alright, that's enough with the mopey faces. I know you expected a hard-earned victory but tough luck. Life's not fair and the situation in the field can change in a second. This should remind you of the dangerous situations you can expect outside."

None of the team members responded to his speech, too drained mentally and physically to reply.

He nodded and said, "Go home now. We'll be having the same drill a month from today. I expect a much better performance then. Practice with the new tool you have at your disposal now."

Daisy looked at her forearm where a blue pulsing tattoo now rested.

It was the runic application that allowed her team members to propel her from barely S-rank to being able to throw hands with the Hulk for a short period of time.

They trudged along towards the exit.

Right before they went out the door, Frank said, "Special Agent Johnson, meet me tomorrow at 0800."

Daisy just nodded and left with her team.

"Think I went a little bit overboard there?" Alfred asked in a slightly pitying tone of voice.

He just sighed at that.

________________________________________________________________

Word Count - 2502

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[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't own anything. Please support the official release.

Chapter 42

Technomancer in MCU

Previously

"Think I went a little bit overboard there?" Alfred asked in a slightly pitying tone of voice.

Frank just sighed at that.

________________________________________________________________

The Asterisk

–Frank Castle–

Removing the thoughts of pity for his team from his mind, he checked his task sheet to mark it as complete, only to see one more task was added to it seemingly at the last moment.

He looked for Alfred to ask him about it but he was nowhere to be found.

"Cheeky Bastard," he muttered under his breath.

He was very much tired, mentally that is, from all the tasks for the day.

Even seeing the beaten-down faces of his normally upbeat and haughty team didn't release his heavy exhaustion for the day.

The only thing that he could think of that could save the day was his wife Maria and her legendary pancakes.

That always cheered him up.

No matter the situation.

He sighed for the umpteenth time that day and checked the last item on the list.

He was about to head to the hangar immediately when a tiny voice popped out of his tablet.

It said, "You can check in with Mrs.Castle and then leave for Mr.Throgg's workshop. Due to his very nature, he will be in his workshop for days at a time if I don't actively dissuade him from doing so. I think he can wait for an extra hour before your meeting."

A smile wormed its way onto his face at the thought of seeing his wife.

He then turned around and marched towards the teleportation pads that facilitated transport between the different sections of the base.

Standing on top of one such pad, he said out loud, "Alfred, Home please."

Mere moments later, a bluish-white light enveloped him and a moment later, he was gone from the pod, leaving the entire training centre empty.

________________________________________________________________

–Maria Castle–

The job that she had taken upon herself was a tiring one but thankfully not a thankless one like her previous job.

Here, people actually appreciated the work she did immensely.

To the point that Ed and even Alfred respected her immensely and complied with all her little demands.

Caring for all the children that the organization found in their rescue missions, enhanced or otherwise found their way into her department in the organisation.

She was aghast at first when she found out that there were no concrete guidelines or frameworks on taking care of the enhanced abandoned or tortured children or teenagers that the agents found.

Bless them but Ed and Alfred really had zero clue about taking care of regular well adjusted children, let alone these troubled ones.

They really were out of their depths when they rescued her family and offered Frank a job.

One that they were in dire need of. Frank really was not in the right headspace whenever he came home from that secret job of his.

Finding out that they were actually going to work for the good side for once and not some shady black ops operations was extremely relieving.

Not to mention the pay and benefits.

Full-fat six-figure salaries for both her and Frank, including pension for both of them.

They were given the option to relocate her kids to the Asterisk for enrollment in the school that she opened but at that point, her kids had grown old enough to form meaningful friendships and she didn't want to take that away from them.

She and Frank discussed it at length but with a nanite package on them at all times and a six-man unit surveilling them round the clock, she was not at all worried for their safety. She pitied the fool who tried to get to Frank through the kids.

She suspected that Frank had even more security measures in place to make sure that nothing like the dreaded park accident would ever happen again.

Being the Commander did have its perks after all.

Hearing the doors opening, she smiled and turned around, heading towards the living room.

Upon seeing Frank, she smiled and ran into his arms.

They stayed like that for a minute, basking in the temporary peaceful silence that engulfed the room.

After a while, they separated and then Frank went upstairs to freshen up and she returned to the kitchen, to make his meal.

Despite multiple reassurances from both Ed and Alfred, she had been still skeptical about the viability of artificially made food from the matter recofigurators that littered the base.

But after seeing the effects of the special food in person, she was convinced about its various benefits BUT that didn't mean that she couldn't make a special meal for her beloved and her kids every now and then.

The base's food might have every single nutritional value perfectly balanced but nothing could top a mother's love as the final ingredient in a homemade meal.

"Maria!", she heard Frank call for her.

"Just a minute," she yelled back.

Using the handy hard light tech built in the house, she made a grabbing motion towards the pot and ethereal hands appeared around the pot handles and lifted it up.

She just turned around and entered the living room and the pot followed her. With another swishing motion, the pot was deposited on the dining table.

Another one of the things that was made extinct by the handy dandy hard light tech of the base.

There was no specialised furniture in most of the houses on the base.

Why have a single fixed structure that would take up space when it is not being used when you can just conjure it up?

And despite it being hard light, Alfred had made mind-boggling advancements in that field, making it so that any piece of hard light could even mimic the feel of a cushion.

These days, the only piece of real furniture anybody had in their houses were their beds and even those might be on their way out the door as she had read in the Nerd Magazine that they had made advancements in the bed comfort area as well.

"Honey? Honey? HONEY?", Frank's shouting brought her out of her daze.

He was looking concerned.

She smiled a brittle smile, hoping to alleviate his worries, "Don't worry, it's nothing."

"Look, I made your favourite, spaghetti with hotdogs. Don't worry, I won't tell you team members that the hard hat Commander's favourite dish is Spaghetti with little pieces of Hot Dog cut into them," she said with false cheer, hoping to deflect the issue.

But Frank did not budge, "What's worrying you, honey? Talk to me, alright? Maybe I can help."

She took a deep breath and said, 'Look, we can talk about this later. The issue is already being solved, you don't need to worry about it. I just need a break from all of that. So, let's just enjoy our meal, shall we?"

He just nodded, still concerned but willing to let it go if she said so.

She seated herself and served the food.

"So, what's the last-moment task now?" she said after chewing a mouthful of the absolutely disgusting concoction that only Frank liked in the whole family.

He smiled and said, "Nothing unusual. Just have to visit Throgg's workshop for some work."

She made a face at that and said, "That man? He is absolutely incorrigible. Do you know what he told the children when we had the whole meet people from new professions every day of the month?"

Frank nodded at her indulgently.

"He had the audacity to tell them to be always on the lookout for betrayal and never trust anybody, not even their left hand, and then against all my expectations, he made it even worse by pulling out a hologram of the demons from Muspelheim and telling them gruesome details of his battle. You know what the worst part was?"

Frank made a go-on gesture towards her.

"It was the fact that most of them looked really interested in that and were asking him more details on how to protect themselves from betrayal. It was heartbreaking to watch. The fact that these small children, some of them even younger than our kids, were made to always watch over their bacs for themselves. Never trusting anyone but themselves. Right then, I kicked him out and vowed to make sure to create an environment for them where they wouldn't ever need to look over their shoulders for betrayal."

By the end of her tirade, she had tears in her eyes and was ugly smiling, in an effort not to ruin the first dinner they had had in weeks.

Both of their busy schedules, mixed with spending time with the kids, they never really got any alone time together.

Frank immediately got up from his seat and hugged her, consoling her, "Hey! Hey, Don't worry. Nothing is going to happen to them now, you of all people should know that. Even Odin would have to go through me before he could even touch any of those kids. So, cheer up alright. It's going to be alright."

She smiled up at him.

"Now, I know for a fact that in the last order you made to Alfred, it had both of our favorite ice cream. I'll go take that out, why don't you go out and put on a movie."

She nodded.

________________________________________________________________

–Frank Castle–

As soon as she left, his face turned dark.

The very air around him cooled slightly.

"Alfred?", he called out in a bone-chilling tone of voice, not mad at Alfred but whoever was behind Maria crying.

"I know you are listening. Throgg's year-old lecture won't make her cry like this. What happened today?" he asked while taking the ice cream out of the fridge.

"I'm afraid you won't be liking it, Commander. I calculate a 99.7% chance of you going absolutely ballistic and taking out the perpetrators with extreme prejudice." Alfred replied.

"I am the commanding officer of all military forces present on the base. That includes you as well, Alfred. I command you, tell me." he commanded Alfred.

"It's the African warlords again. They somehow got their hands on a vampire and one who was a mystic before he turned as well." Alfred replied.

"Vampire? How is that possible? I thought we dealt with all of them when I went out on my cleaning trip." Frank responded darkly, gritting his teeth at his apparent failure to clean up some pests.

"Need I remind you, any and all missions on the African continent are to be ceased as we wait for Wakanda to take their stage on the global stage and wrest back control of the entire African Continent from the various parties that have sliced it up among themselves. It is an express order from Ed himself and no insubordination in that regard will be allowed, you know it as well as I do."

He took deep breaths, calming down slightly.

"What is their connection to Maria's department?" he asked Alfred.

"The vampire was using them to conduct experiments on the local children. He had heard of our massacre and had gone into hiding. He had a lair in Kenya where he chanced upon some warlord who was all too willing to fall into the usual bait of immortality. Upon converting the warlord, he had him make his entire tribe offer all of their children as sacrifices. He was apparently making a mystic virus, one that could infect children with high magical potential and then use it as a phylactery to reincarnate himself into a human body with high potential to escape our purges."

He clenched his fists at that.

"What happened to him?"

"Who, the vampire? Oh, he is dust now, as is his entire operation. The unfortunate thing was he had turned the entire tribe into his mindless thralls, sparing only the children for his experiments."

He closed his eyes at that tragic news.

Only the first-generation elders could turn humans into vampires. The ones that still retained their sanity, albeit with a newfound hunger for blood.

The second generation ones can turn one or maybe two humans into vampires, but that too only if they are very old and strong. The rest of their infected turn into mindless thralls, only capable of following basic orders, basically nothing more than zombies.

Despite Alfred's best efforts, they had yet to find a cure for the mindless thralls.

It was as if the moment they were turned, their souls left their bodies, and their brains were chemically remolded to follow the vampire's orders. It was a very permanent procedure.

"So, the kids? Did all of them make it out of there alive?" he asked Alfred.

Alfred's hologram popped up in front of him and he sadly shook his head.

The ceramic cups creaked in his hands from how hard he was clenching his knuckles.

"Frank, Honey? What's taking so long? They are at the door-side." Maria shouted from the living room.

"Coming, honey," he shouted back.

"If no missions are allowed, how did the kids come into our custody?" he asked Alfred as he took out spoons from the drawers.

"It was N'Jadaka."

He looked up in surprise at that, he didn't expect to hear from his former teammate for a long time after he finally got into his home country.

"He has begun undertaking personal missions around Wakanda to cleanse the supernatural areas and by happenstance, came onto their operation. Safe to say, he cleaned it up within moments but after seeing the children, he had no choice but to call us. He knew nobody in Wakanda had the expertise to deal with enhanced children." Alfred said.

He snapped his neck towards Alfred at that.

"Enhanced? Does this mean that the vampire was successful?"

Alfred nodded, "Sadly, yes. The reason Mrs.Castle is so sad is that that kid is aware of what is happening to him. He has basically given up all hope and only takes the bare minimum of nutrient-rich blood for the caretakers and doesn't mingle with any of the other kids, not even his own brother, who was rescued along with him. He has started to distance himself from his last remaining family in hopes of protecting him from himself."

He nodded to himself, "I see. Add a meeting with Ed to my schedule whenever he is available."

"Very well."

He then took a deep breath, made a slightly smiling face, and went to the living room with the ice cream.

The sight of Maria being huddled up in blankets with the firewood lit up and probably some cheesy rom-com on the TV was like a balm to his soul.

He gave her the cup of ice cream and huddled up under the blanket, cuddling her.

Kissing her forehead, he took a bit out of his cup of ice cream.

He would make sure that every last one of those vampire pests was hunted down like the vermins they were.

Soon, Maria fell asleep.

She must have been exhausted from the mental stress of keeping a happy face at the nursery despite being so heartbroken from the inside.

Carefully extricating himself from her iron hold, he wore his uniform and took out his tablet, and called for his escort to Throgg's workshop.

It was a good thing he had work to do, he couldn't exactly sleep now, could he?

________________________________________________________________

Word Count - 2593

If you guys would like to support or just want to read ahead, you can head on to my patreon.

 

[AstralBard.N]

Why can I see frank in this?

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/886/632/3f7.jpg (Can't work the image insert thing

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Why can I see frank in this?

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/886/632/3f7.jpg (Can't work the image insert thing

Click to shrink...

Haha, too true!
He's had a couple crusades at this point now.

 

[IdleMuse0307]

Disclaimer - I don't own anything. Please support the official release.

Chapter 43

Technomancer in MCU

Previously

Carefully extricating himself from her iron hold, he wore his uniform and took out his tablet, and called for his escort to Throgg's workshop.

It was a good thing he had work to do, he couldn't exactly sleep now, could he?

________________________________________________________________

–Frank Castle–

Watching how Alfred had been incorporated into every little thing in the base was always fascinating.

It was never said out loud but silently acknowledged that you were never truly alone when you were on the Asterisk. Alfred was always with you.

Even if you thought you were alone, he was there, ever-present inside the nanite packages given to any person that ever set foot on the base.

It did have its perks.

Like right now, the very fact that I had an escort machine ready for use right after I left my doorstep.

It was just there, silently floating outside the fence of the house, sent by Alfred who had anticipated my responses.

Getting into it, he said out loud, "Do I ever tell you how much I appreciate you helping run everything? Without you, we probably wouldn't be able to complete half our tasks."

"Not nearly enough, Commander Castle," Alfred's voice came from the sound system of the car.

"Whose car is this?" he asked Alfred after seeing a photo on the dashboard of the car.

"Oh, this? It is your neighbour's car. I temporarily requisitioned it for military purposes." Alfred replied without a care in the world like he hadn't just stolen another person's car in the middle of the night.

Before he could protest though, Alfred said, "Don't worry. I have deposited more than an adequate amount of credits into his account. He would be more than happy to give you his car again after that."

He then rolled his eyes after that.

Soon, the base hangar came into view.

The location where the car landed made him roll his eyes.

It had landed right in front of his personal jet.

It was hideous.

Apparently, Alfred had taken creative liberties when he had made the Commander's jet, knowing well that I hated those gaudy colours.

It was all Red and Gold and Matte Black in colours.

It was something Stark would have.

Disgusting.

Getting out of the car, he said, "You do realise I am not sitting in that, right?"

Alfred replied, "You have to. Look around you, there is no other jet available."

He looked around, only to see that Alfred was right.

That cheeky bastard.

"You did this on purpose, didn't you?" he asked with gritted teeth.

"Come on, Commander. What is the purpose of having a special jet for the Commander if he never uses it." Alfred replied like a whiny brat.

He rolled his eyes and said, "The Commander would have seen some use of it had the colours not been vomit-inducing to him. But very well, I don't want to waste any more time on this. Let's go."

He spied from the corner of his eyes that Alfred's hologram was doing a little victory dance.

He cleared his throat at that and Alfred stopped and made a gesture towards the jet as if saying - After you.

He then went towards the jet and midway through, a veritable lightshow of different colours activated on the jet's body.

The hangar opened up only to show disco lights active in the rear cargo bay and poles lowered through the ceilings.

It was mortifying.

Looking around in disgusted fascination, he said, "You are lucky that Maria doesn't know about any of this. Digital or not, she would have found a way to make it hurt."

All the lights, music, and the fog stopped at that statement.

He smirked at that reaction. He liked the fear that Maria's name generated in the base.

It gave him validation that he was not the only one who was absolutely terrified of that woman.

By the time he reached the pilot seat, all the gaudy displays were suspiciously absent and the entire cabin had a professional look and feel to it.

Sitting on the pilot seat, he spoke out loud, "Alfred, you know the destination. Please put it on autopilot, no external stimuli. I want to get some shut-eye."

"Affirmative, Commander." came the reply.

He closed his eyes on the seat only to feel the entire seat reclining backward and the leg rests coming up, turning the seat into a true bed.

He wanted to speak up but then the massage function kicked in, cutting his complaints short.

But despite getting all the relaxing treatment one could possibly get, he still couldn't sleep or relax while on the job.

He still had issues from when he was a regular on the job. All night stakeouts, shootouts, and encounters were the norm when he still worked under Schoonover.

Even after personally putting a bullet in that bastard's head, he still woke up in sweat, afraid for his family's safety sometimes.

It was the reason he still couldn't relax while being on the job.

It took him weeks of personally watching over the details that protected his kids to be sure of their competence even after repeated assurances from both Ed and Alfred.

Sigh…

"Alfred, I don't think I'll be getting any rest tonight. So why don't you just open up the view for me."

"Very well, sir."

The seats straightened themselves and the massage stopped.

The windshield which previously consisted entirely of holograms showing various parameters of the flight now turned transparent, showing off the lovely blue ball of life that was Earth.

The jet soon crossed the area where Earth's jump gate was located at.

As soon as the jet cleared the safe area, it rocketed forward like a missile.

Soon, it breached the upper atmosphere without even a hint of burning up due to the vibranium shields and then went right through the sea of white clouds, finally making the ocean visible.

If this was his very first trip to Throgg's workshop, he would have been concerned at the fact that the jet was not slowing down at all even when the water was coming increasingly closer but he was not, so he just watched on as the jet nosedived into the ocean and dove straight down towards the ocean surface.

The kinetic energy absorbing technology came in very handy during violent entries into the ocean just like this one.

The jet hadn't slowed down at all and despite that, barring a small disturbance during entry, there was no reaction to the jet entering the water at Mach speeds.

Soon, they dove into a trench that was hidden behind a hologram to ensure nobody poked their noses where they didn't belong.

As soon as the jet crossed the illusion boundary, the surroundings that became visible from the other side were tinted with red.

The jet soon came in front of the entrance to Throgg's workshop, an underwater volcano.

Apparently, Throgg was really concerned about his privacy and didn't want to be anywhere near other people.

The jet came to a stop in front of the volcano and then an orange wave passed through the jet as part of the identity verification processes installed in his home/office/workshop.

There really was no need for this. He then spoke into the intercom, "Throgg, you fossil, you do realise nobody really wants to come into your stinky home. I, for one, would certainly prefer being with my wife at home rather than being with an ancient fossil."

That did the trick as the identification module closed itself and the invisible shield around the volcano entrance opened up.

He smirked as Throgg's big ugly face came onto the screen as the jet started to slowly enter the volcano.

"If it wasn't for your leader's strength and the fact that I wouldn't even be able to shit if not for his strange contraptions, I wouldn't even look in you mortals' direction," Throgg said grumpily.

"Good to see you too, Throgg." he replied with an infuriating smirk.

"Just get in and finish your job so I can have my peace and quiet back," Throgg replied with a sigh and closed the call.

He then got back to reading his notes for this retrieval mission.

Yes, because for some reason, this was listed as a high enough priority mission that the Commander had to personally come to retrieve it.

He had also not missed the HUD on the jet signalling multiple bogies converging around the area on the surface of the ocean where his jet's exit point would be.

It would seem that a high-priority item needed to be transported out of there.

Soon they entered the base.

It was a very challenging thing to build for Alfred. They had to commission multiple sorcerers who had to work in shifts to maintain the enclosure around the spatial bubble while Alfred did his work to build inside and then use the barrier tech to hold out the lava whilst also using its heat as an energy source.

He had questioned the decision of even making this base but Alfred and Ed loved challenges and this was the most interesting thing they had to do at the time. So, Throgg got his dream base.

A workshop inside the molten core of a sun, he called it. Well, this was as close as he was going to get for now.

The jet landed and as soon as he came out of the cargo bay, Throgg landed right in front of him.

Throgg then flexed his magical skills, creating an area of high gravity around themselves, trying to make the puny human submit.

But, as usual, he just smirked and activated his powers.

This resulted not only in the gravity field being negated but also in the propulsion systems of his suit failing and Throgg falling right on his ass.

Throgg groaned at the sudden impact but swiftly recovered and stood up. He then laughed, "AHAHAHA! You are as rigid as ever, Frank. Honestly, you should have been a dwarf. We would have had the best mead fests with you around."

He smirked and shook hands with the old dwarf, "Maybe in some other timeline I am one. We know they exist."

Throgg waved his metallic hands, "Bah! I don't believe in that piece of nonsense. Anyway, let's go. The sooner you take that stuff off my hands, the sooner I can relax." He then turned around and tapped his foot on the ground twice.

The area they were standing on lit up on the circular edges and soon they found themselves floating and on their way to the office.

Soon they found themselves in front of a huge gate, easily 50ft tall.

He was wrong. They found themselves in front of the vault where Throgg stored all his previous artifacts.

While Throgg was in the process of opening his multi-level lock system, he said, "The item must truly be something for you to allow it to be stored in your precious vault. I believe the only one who has been inside the vault other than you is Ed and by extension, Alfred."

After a series of complicated runes flashed on the door, the gate started to lift up, showcasing the vault of the oldest Dwarf alive.

When Ed rescued him and offered him a permanent base on Earth, he had Alfred send multiple teams to loot the old stashes that he had stored throughout the nine realms, resulting in this huge vault that stored dangerous items that could destroy the planet multiple times over.

It was a sad thing that of the entire organisation, nobody was able to use these artifacts as of yet.

He had heard from Alfred that Ed was planning to have Daisy involved in the process of making one so they would have higher chances of the artifact accepting her but that was still years away.

"Oh, it was something alright. Who in their right mind would just hand over an Infinity Stone to a mad dwarf?" Throgg's mutterings snapped him out of his daze.

What did he say?

"Did you just say an Infinity Stone?" he asked Throgg

Throgg gave the command for the platform to float toward the cube that floated in the center of the vault. He then glanced backward at the question and said, "Yeah, and not just any Infinity Stone. He just came here one day and casually handed me the most dangerous of the stones, The Mind Stone. It was an insidious piece of work. Do you have any idea how much time it took to remove that nasty psychic imprint on the stone that commanded it to subtly influence everybody nearby?"

He made to speak only to be silenced by the mad Dwarf's ramblings, "Years worth of hellfire supply? Gone. I had to personally create a Uru cage for that imprint. Gotta hand it to whoever it was, it was a strong psychic imprint and near impossible to destroy. But I wasn't called Throgg the Mad in my prime."

Frustrated by the ramblings of Throgg that led nowhere near to answers, he interrupted and asked, "What is it that I have to transport? What was Ed thinking, giving you an Infinity Stone of all things?"

"I know, right? I asked him the same thing when he first gave me the thing. Anyway, behold my latest creation." Throgg replied and then gestured towards the cube that began to open up, shrouding him and Throgg in an eerie yellow glow.

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Word Count -2275

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[Amodock]

you know, I think I know why he was given the infinity stone considering how little he actually cared about it