Hiding

With Wanda and Natasha.

Alex had just had an amazing time with Natasha and put her to sleep. They were still flying since their journey was a bit long and the plane was a simple public-based one and wasn't some secret high-level tech from Shield.

Soon, Wanda also stirred awake. The moment he realized that she was about to wake up, he'd come to her and wrapped her in his embrace. They were sitting in the comfortable seats with Wanda snuggled in Alex's lap.

"Mhm, Alex..." She felt comfortable with his warmth and hugged him tighter.

"Morning Wanda…" Alex smiled as he felt her press herself close to him.

"How are you, Alex?" She asked him with a groggy tone to her voice.

"Wonderful. And extremely proud of you. You did amazingly. You knocked every single person within a 5-mile radius. And no one was hurt, other than maybe hitting their head on the concrete and getting a concussion, but that's it." Alex went on a bit of a tangent but got back on track.

"Hehe…" She had a pleased smile on her face as she enjoyed his praise.

"What happened after that?" She asked him as she got up from his lap and stretched. No matter how comfortable the recliner couch-like seat was, she'd been sleeping in that sitting posture for almost 12 hours. Even with Alex making sure that she was comfortable, it couldn't be as comfortable as a bed.

"Well, I found two planes and loaded everyone that had come to help Captain America in one of the planes. I separated a body and used it to fly that plane away. They're going to take care of themselves. This plane only has you, me, and Natasha.

"Nat?" She had a confused smile on her face as her eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

"I'm… bonded to her. Just like you. I happened at the same time as I bonded with you." He had a hesitant look on his face and seemed as if he was feeling apprehensive about her reaction to the news. He knew that he had to placate her a little to make her feel like she matters to him.

"Is-is that so?" Wanda was a little stunned and blinked her eyes a few times while tilting her head a little.

"Yeah. I can bond with as many people as I want as long as I have enough mental capacity. It helps me to get better and stronger at a faster pace." Alex told her some very valid reasons.

"I see… Where are we going?" She didn't seem to want to talk about the topic for long. She seemed to want some time to think about this.

Alex understood her, "Natasha told me about a nice place in the mountains. It's got enough supplies to last us for a while so I'm piloting us there. We can't really be seen in the public eye for a while." He told her about the place that Nat had told him about.

"That sounds like a nice peaceful place…" She seemed to like the prospect of being away from everyone for a while.

"It will be. We can spend the time we have there to develop our powers and to get stronger together. We'll also have enough time to do some other things…" He trailed off with a suggestive look on his face that made Wanda blush.

"Sounds like a plan…" She said with an expectant expression on her face.

"You guys seem to be having fun." Nat's voice sounded from the side. She was awake and had got up from her seat and walked toward Wanda who was standing in the middle of the aisle.

"Nat…" Wanda seemed to be a little tense and the atmosphere got a little oppressive. Natasha was someone whom Wanda admired quite a bit. She was strong and confident and seemed to be in control of everything.

"Alex told me about what you did. Thank you." Natasha didn't let the tenseness continue and gave Wanda a tight hug that surprised her but she returned the hug nonetheless. As the tense atmosphere faded away, things got much more harmonious.

"It's nothing… Alex has been helping me train my powers recently. I've gotten much better with them." Wanda told Natasha.

"I'm proud of you…" Nat was happy for Wanda. Especially since Wanda was the only female Avenger besides her. There was a slight feeling of camaraderie between them. And Natasha, much older than Wanda, thought of her as a sort of younger sister.

Hearing Tony tell Steve that he'd confined Wanda to the Compound had made Natasha want to break Wanda out as soon as possible. But she knew that Steve would be doing that sooner or later so she didn't try to convince Tony or act.

"We'll be there in 10 minutes…" Alex informed them as they were both talking.

"How are you going to land the plane?" Nat asked. There was no runway to land a plane in that villa. It was hidden in the mountains and could accommodate a helicopter at most, but a normal aircraft would be impossible to even park there, let alone land which requires a full runway and everything.

"Well, for that, Wanda. I'm going to need your help." Alex said.

"You don't have to do too much, just coat the outside of the plane with your Chaos energy and try to bring it to a halt after I give the signal. I'll take care of the rest." Alex said, to which Wanda agreed with a serious expression on her face.

"Can you stop it?" Nat asked with a worried look on her face. She knew how narrow the valley was, in which the villa was hidden. It was made in a place that would be inaccessible and difficult to reach and find. It was going to be pretty hard to get the jet to land there.

"I can take care of it. Don't you worry..." Alex smiled and placated her worries. He could easily calculate when he needed to make Wanda start decelerating the plane to make sure that they reached the correct spot.

The three of them went to the cockpit as Wanda covered the plane's hull with her energy and waited for Alex to signal her to halt the airplane's movements.

"Alex, why do I feel like the hull of the airplane is… you." Wanda was confused since the hull of the plane felt the same as Alex felt to her. She had very intimately registered how her energy responds to Alex and was able to identify it easily.

"That's because I've wrapped myself around the hull of this plane and camouflaged it. We couldn't really go out in the open like that. It's not safe for us after today." He explained as he timely stopped the engines so that the plane would come to a stop with Wanda's assistance at the right time.

"You've been camouflaging us for so long?" Nat seemed a little worried.

Alex saw through her worries and told her, "I'm very different from a human, Nat. I'm essentially an immortal alien life form and can run at optimum efficiency perpetually as long as my mental power doesn't get drained. And I'm far from tired."

"Oh, yeah…" Nat had forgotten since Alex had been acting as a person with them all the time. Both Nat and Wanda remembered that Alex's real body was bonded with them.

Which was sort of correct.

The way Alex's connection to all of the parts of himself in the different versions of Earth worked could be thought of as a tree-like network with a singular root or the main trunk of the tree.

The main trunk was his central body which was within the spaceship floating in space right now. That trunk had 5 distinct branches extending from it that were considered permanent and stable branches, one for each host that he currently had— Gwen-65, Nerdy Gwendolyn, Natasha, Wanda, and Mary Jane. Those permanent branches were able to form more branches that extended to his other bodies. He hadn't formed a main branch with Jessica since the bond with her was still at level 0. So, the branch connecting to her was dormant. The main trunk also had 36 dormant branches connected to the other shuttles en route to the other versions of Earth.

It wasn't always like this, at the start when Alex created bodies, they would be directly connected to his root body, but he created this system to make it more efficient. Each world had at least one anchor node that would be used as Alex's main connection to the world. The rest of the bodies that he creates within that world would use the anchor node of that world to connect with his main consciousness.

The symbiotes were a special race where the consciousness or the 'soul' of the beings did not reside in their bodies. But Alex hadn't fully understood any of that stuff yet. He just felt that his true soul or consciousness wasn't actually within any of his bodies and he was only using the nodes to connect with it.

He himself was exploring how everything worked and how the symbiotes' hive mind connected them over such large distances. He was still exploring 'himself'.

For now, all he was able to do was disguise himself as a normal symbiote so that the others within the hive mind don't end up flocking to him due to his complete consciousness.

This so-called complete consciousness was something he just assumed. He'd realized that the sentience of the symbiotes was very limited so their consciousnesses were probably considered 'incomplete'.

It was completely unchartered territory so he was going to take time to understand himself completely.

He was glad that Knull was in a dormant state for now. Or at least that was what he assumed.

Being the creator of the symbiotes, he would be able to control every single symbiote.

'Though if that fucker Venom was able to resist Knull's order then I should be able to too…' Alex was weirdly competitive with the original Venom from the comics.

***

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