Chapter 12

Max offered to help them, more like they were hiring him. They heard the offer and they were not liking Max's attitude because no one treated them like that.

Alexander Pierce said to Max, "Max, you are someone with great powers and people like you shouldn't only think about themselves. You were given this power for something beyond yourself. You should think for the betterment of others."

Max said, "Come and say that to my face after you have said it to the mutants and I will work for S.H.I.E.L.D."

Pierce said in a nervous tone, "We have mutants in S.H.I.E.L.D."

Max said, "We both know what I am talking about. No more discussions, either accept the deal and pay me for yesterday's battle, or stay away from me. Instead, if you try to do something stupid and people around me are affected by it, you will not just be seeing your information in the news. You shouldn't be making me your enemy."

A woman in the video call said to Max, "Please give us time to discuss about it. Could you please wait outside."

Max nodded and said, "But make it quick, I don't have a lot of time for you."

Max then left the room and Maria was waiting outside the door. Max asked Maria, "I was curious as to how someone joins S.H.I.E.L.D."

Maria answered, "There obviously are no recruitments like the army or other agencies. We are selected because we are the best in our field."

Max then made some small talk with Maria to pass time. Meanwhile, inside the room, Alexander Pierce slammed his hands on the table before him, shaking the projection.

He shouted, "Are we really going to let a 28 year old play us around? We are S.H.I.E.L.D. We ensure the Earth is safe and we will make sure it is safe, by any means necessary. If you had agreed to my plan of taking someone hostage to keep him in control, we wouldn't be in this situation."

A woman from the screen shouted back, "You have Max's file right. Who do you suggest we take hostage, the wife who ran off with another man or the new girlfriend who helped him wipe out the fleet. Do you think I like doing this Pierce? Did you see the report from the radar team? The amount of energy detected in outer space was enough to wipe out the Earth from the solar system twice. Do you really want to mess with people who are better as allies than enemies? Also, now that we know there is life in outer space, he could even abandon Earth for any other planet that decides to treat him better for his powers. Fury says that the girl has already decided to leave to outer space. This Max is our only chance."

Although the others in the council didn't like Max, they felt that everything the woman said made sense. The woman said, "Now, we will vote for whether we agree to his deal or not."

Everyone in the council raised their hands except Pierce. He said, "I still don't like this plan."

Pierce was furious that Max wasn't in his control. He was part of Hydra, a secret organization that had devised a very elaborate plan of taking over the world and had spent a lot of time and effort to execute it while staying hidden. But Pierce knew that Max would be a variable in their plan. A variable they couldn't control and didn't have any countermeasures against. That's why he was reluctant to let Max go.

Now, with the decision made against Pierce's will, they called Maria and informed her to send Max inside.

Maria then got a message in her intercom, which Max also picked up. Maria was about to say what she heard, but Max stopped her and headed inside.

When he entered, Pierce, although he was trying to maintain a smile on his face, anyone could tell that he was unhappy with the outcome of the discussion.

A man from the call said to Max, "Max, we have discussed about your deal and we would be happy to have you help us, but before we go ahead with it, we would like some sort of assurance that we don't have to worry about anyone's safety."

Max said, "Do you have anything in mind?"

The man said, "We would like to station someone near you so that we don't have to worry about others' safety."

Max knew that the moment he was involved with Fury, he would have people around him monitoring him all the time. He already had this in mind and since he already had a solution for this, he said, "Although I feel uncomfortable having someone around me at all times, I understand that you are afraid of my godlike powers. I will allow it as long as it is a woman. And remember that I only agreed to being monitored by someone. I don't want any cameras around me."

The man said, "Thanks for understanding Max. We also have decided to reward you with 20 million dollars for saving Earth from the alien invasion."

They decided to reward him properly as a sign of restoring their good image after they had threatened him.

Max said, "Nice doing business with you. Now, I have other things to do. Also, I forgot to mention something before, make sure that the missions are at least worth a million, or they aren't worth my time."

Max then left and Maria escorted him back to the jet he arrived in. The jet flew him back to land, where he flew back to Maria's home. When he arrived there, he noticed that the house was empty.

He walked up to the door and saw a note that read, "

Max, I haven't seen my parents in a while and I would like to visit them even though I don't like their behavior that much. Will be back in a day.

-Carol"

Max said to himself, "Great, I was also thinking of testing out a few ideas I got when my mind was on nitro."

Max then flew back to his house. He flew in through the window and jumped into his bed. He sensed the cameras and mics all around the house and fried them to make sure. He thought of all the things he did the previous day and said, "I can't believe that a week ago, I was patrolling the streets and now I am able to threaten an ultra powerful secretive government controlled agency."

He then got up and closed the windows and curtains again. He scanned the surroundings and after he was sure that no one could see him, he took out the tesseract he was hiding inside himself.

On his way back home, he bought a lead container and many batteries that are used in inverters. He needed the lead to block the radiation from the tesseract, or else anyone could pick up the energy signatures since it was a lot.

He placed it inside the container and said, "Now I feel good again. It was pretty weird to hollow out my body for such a long time."

With the tesseract, he had access to unlimited power. He was then ready to test out the ideas he got when his head was running on nitro.

One idea was a way to train his body without any limit to how strong he wanted to become. Currently, his body was not building muscles since it knew that he didn't need more muscles. The body started building muscles only when it felt you might need them. This happened in many ways and one of them was to work them and strain the muscles.

With the amount of electricity in his body powering him, he couldn't strain his muscles, but he found a solution to that and now that he knew the solution, he felt dumb that he didn't get it before.

The problem was the high amount of electricity in his body boosting his strength, so all he had to do was get rid of it. He could transfer electricity from his body to the batteries and keep the bare minimum to enable him to move. This would leave him in a weakened state and he would be able to grow stronger without having to go around searching for more weights constantly.

He decided to keep this for the end, when he was done trying out his other ideas. He had two more, one of which was to try reading minds. He dismissed this idea earlier because this also required a large amount of thinking and processing. The mutants had it more convenient since their brain automatically processed the brain waves while Max had to do it on his own, using his own consciousness.

Now that he had access to process data quickly and better, he decided to try this out, but this required a test subject. So, he put it down and moved to the last idea doable for now, that was to make clones of himself.

He got this idea when he turned into electricity completely in Maria's house during the explosion. When he split his body into electrons and joined them back again, he could process how his body was forming again.

If he could replicate this process, it would mean that he could make clones of himself with electricity and could make unlimited clones with the tesseract.

He was most excited to try this, because he also wondered if the clone would have consciousness like him, would it start thinking on its own, would it try to kill Max to replace him? Thinking about all these got Max even more excited to try and clone himself.

Max then released a large amount of electricity from his palms, but they weren't lightning bolts. The electricity slowly came out of his palms and started assembling before him.

The electricity first turned into a skeleton and then slowly muscles started forming around them, finally ending with the blood vessels and the skin.

The clone was complete and was a perfect replica of Max. Max looked at his clone and was pleasantly surprised at how much it resembled him even on his first try.

While looking at his clone, he immediately felt like electricity in his body was being drained. Along with that, he was seeing himself, not the clone version of himself, but the real version of himself.

He was seeing what the clone was seeing, hearing it too. Max went to the tesseract to recharge and said, "The clones might be a bit problematic without any power source nearby. It drains a lot of power to make it and an even larger power to maintain it."

The clone was able to maintain its shape and function because of Max's head. His mind was the one controlling the electrons in the clone and thus Max's mind had to run twice as fast as normal, which continuously drained electricity. It would be better to have a constant source of electricity nearby when using clones.

He then tried to move it around and Max could see what it was seeing, without even moving from his place. Max said, "This is both trippy and crazy."

Max then wanted to try out something and made the clone go for a run. He wanted to know how far the clone could move from him before it dissipated.

The clone ran for 50 metres until it completely deformed back into electricity and zapped a nearby pigeon, completely burning it.

Max sighed, "I guess I still have to work hard myself."

Max wanted to use clones to learn information useful for him by sending the clones to different places, but with the range constraint, it was not different from going himself.

He then drained all the electricity in his body, leaving only enough to move. He then headed back to the gym he paid for. Now the gym memberships didn't go to waste.

He started training and only after a few moments, he said to himself, "This is definitely working."

He said this because he couldn't even lift the lowest level of any machine. This meant that his plan would work. He then continued grinding while the trainer was confused as to how he went from lifting the highest weights of all machines in the gym to not being able to lift even one.

Max somehow struggled through for an hour and it was time for his martial arts classes. The masters teaching him were also shocked to see how he had powered down in just a day.

After all the classes, he walked home and thought to himself, "Now that I have a clear picture on how to form muscles with electricity, I should be able to make muscles on my own, but it is better to research on them first. I can't just pop up muscles anywhere. It might hinder my movement. Also, it would be better if I could make the muscle cells smaller so that I don't look too bulky even with more muscles."

[I have received comments telling me not to make the story a harem, which might affect the plot if he starts messing around with every woman he sees. That actually makes sense. I will focus more on the plot than the harem and I will not make it a Pokemon game where he has to complete the pokedex.

I can remove the harem, but then it would mean the story wouldn't be mine. I absolutely appreciate advice on how to write better, but if I change the whole story, I might slowly start losing motivation. Thanks for all the advice though.]