Chapter 0182: Energy Surge

'I thought that the attackers were someone Murdock sent…' Alex frowned as he looked at the Ten Rings symbol on the TV that placed the speaker from before, 'This can't be a simple impersonating thing either…' Alex remembered the shitty plot of the third Iron Man movie, 'Organizations like AIM don't have the kind of ability or the connections to bring in tons of TNT and destroy a skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan.'

'Could the Hand have partnered up with the Mandarin? It would give them enough motive to target Gwen. I guess Murdock sold out…' Alex sighed as he realized that he should've kept a closer eye on Murdock, 'Wait no…' Alex thought of something and determined, 'Murdock didn't have anything to do with this, it hasn't even been an entire day since Gwen took care of him. Nor did he have anything that would connect him to the Mandarin when I checked his memories…'

Alex couldn't come up with anything in the short term and decided to stand back for a bit. Gwen's reality had more than enough superheroes and the Mandarin had just painted the biggest target on its back with their single bombing. This attack might not have the same significance as the nine eleven attack since the building targeted wasn't something like the World Trade Center, but it was still a commercial skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan. The implications and impact of something like this were huge.

'Let's wait and see their next move.' Alex decided to adopt a wait-and-see strategy. He could personally protect those he deemed necessary to protect, and even a nuke wouldn't be able to do much against his protection. The only reason that Gwen was in a fatigue coma — needing an entire week of recovery — as Alex healed her was because of her own headstrong need to push herself.

'Maybe I should threaten a skyscraper and force Gwen to train even harder… Maybe then she'll train with even more efficiency.' Alex laughed at his thought. However, he was seriously considering it. If Gwen could be so driven by righteousness, he could threaten to kill a couple of ten thousand people and use that drive to make her train.

"Do you think I'm a bad father for being relieved that Gwen is currently unconscious?" Alex heard George speak to him and looked at the older man. He was sitting on the couch in a slumped posture and was looking at Alex from the side of his eye.

"Nah," Alex said casually before taking a seat beside the man, "It just means you really care about her. If she knew that the attack was a terrorist organization, she would bust her ass to get them, even if it destroyed her. That's just how she works…" Alex's words made George chuckle a little.

"She's my baby girl, after all," He said with pride, "If I was still a part of the force, I would without question charge into the danger…"

"I guess she learned from the best, huh..." Alex said.

"All right," George looked at Alex, "Keep Gwen company, sit with her while I see if there are any updates about this."

"Yeah." Alex got up and went back to Gwen's room, leaving George to fiddle around until the emergency broadcast that showed nothing but the Ten Rings logo disappeared.

As Alex entered Gwen's room he slowly closed the door and looked out of her window for a few seconds before turning to her.

Seeing Gwen's peacefully sleeping face, Alex couldn't help but sigh. He was the only one who knew how messed up her internals currently were. Not only was her body in a horrible state, but her brain was the main thing that had been overloaded by the burning blood. Even though she got most of the people out of there, Gwen had essentially killed herself over it. The only reason she was still fine was that Alex was there to forcefully keep her alive and heal her back up.

"Moron…" Alex mumbled before sitting beside Gwen, "Whatever, let's see what the Ten Rings wants to do… I'm guessing world domination if their message was anything to go by. But I can't help but feel like there is more to it."

…

MCU Earth.

Some time had passed in the MCU since Alex and Wanda started working on their new sanctum and its progress was going pretty smoothly. With the main foundation having been finalized in the previous two weeks, construction had already started in full swing. They were currently working on the central dome that would be the focal point of the entire structure.

Alex had experienced different times on each of the earths in this time. The one day that he'd been with Laura in Farm Earth comprised ten days on MCU Earth — This disparity was due to Farm Earth and Research Earth having been conjoined together, which allowed their timelines to get synced together, but also caused that time to be very varied from the rest of the cluster since those two planets were somewhat separated from the gravitational interferences. And in this same time, the half day that Gwen had taken to confront Murdock and almost kill herself over some random civilians, four more days had passed in the MCU Earth.

Just that would've been fine and acceptable to Alex. But with him being hyperaware of the differences in the passing time on each Earth, he could tell that time was currently moving much slower in the MCU as compared to Gwen's Earth, which meant that a single day in the MCU would probably result in the passing of an entire week on Earth-65 — Gwen's Earth. Sadly, even that wasn't sure to be consistent. It was possible that this would flip around once again in a couple of hours.

'I'm gonna get a headache if I keep thinking about the constantly varying time on every single one of these fucking planets…' Alex getting a headache was a huge deal. It would be like multiple supercomputers working together getting overheated, 'I almost wish that a Celestial or two would burst out of some of the planets…' Alex didn't care about having probably jinxed it. If anything, he was kind of looking forward to devouring a Celestial, though he doubted he would be able to go through with that plan.

At the very least, not without being able to manipulate Cosmic Energy freely such that he would be able to break through the Celestial's natural protection. He'd already had quite a bit of trouble with the Inhuman that he devoured. An actual Celestial would be far more trouble.

At this time, in the airborne Black Widow Fortress, Natasha was talking to Tony, "You can stop trying to hack into my base," She said dryly, "It's not the flimsy original protection."

"Worth a try," Tony said with a shrug, "It's a nice place. If only it was energy efficient."

"It's got a nuclear reactor with enough Uranium to last a century," Nat said, "I think it's good enough."

"It could be better," He said, "Plus if I change it, you have no risk of radiation poisoning if the reactor isn't maintained correctly."

"I'll take a rain check on that," Nat said with a smile, "Now why are you here?"

"Right to the point, huh?" Tony said, "I just came to see the base of the new organization that I'm going to be sponsoring. A flying fortress, seriously. I don't know why I didn't make something like this for myself sooner."

"Cause you'd sooner be a lackey for the government than to be someone with a spine." Another voice came that made Tony's brow twitch.

"Rogers, always a pleasure," Tony said casually.

"Steve…" Nat gave the older man a look that made him suppress his hostility.

Tony wanted to quip something that would make Steve annoyed, but Nat's look was directed to him too and he clicked his tongue, "Fine."

"Are you here to just inspect your investment opportunity or do you actually have something that you need from us?" Natasha asked with a smile.

"I've detected some sort of an anomaly in the Transian Mountains," Tony said, "I'm getting energy readings similar to those of Wanda's as if there is some sort of huge surge of energy gathering there."

"Wanda is in Wakanda, Tony." Nat said, "She has nothing to do with this." Nat came to her defense while asking Alex, [Does she?]

[No. This is actually the first I've heard of this…] Alex recalled something, [Ask him if the readings are similar or the same.]

"I know, I know," Tony said, "That's why I said that the readings are similar," Nat didn't need to ask since Tony told her the answer to her question directly, "I'm seeing readings of some kind of energy that can bring about causality and reality manipulation effects. Very similar to Wanda's, but there are some distinct differences. For one, those are purple instead of Wanda's red."

His words made Natasha look at him blankly for a few seconds before she shook her head and spoke, "So you want me to bring the fortress there so that you can use it as a base and set up a lab to study that energy surge." She understood Tony's purpose, "You want to make something that can combat Wanda." She narrowed her eyes.

"Don't give me that look," Tony said, "It's a precautionary measure. Didn't I end up using the Hulkbuster too?"

[The energy surge might not be natural, it could be a witch.] Alex said in Nat's head, [Ask him what he would do in that case.]

Nat didn't get what Alex meant by the term witch, but decided to ask him about it later later, "What if the surge isn't natural?" She asked, "What if there's someone similar to Wanda?"

"Vision has more important things to do than go around creating superpowered individuals." Tony shrugged off the possibility, "And if it is someone like Wanda, all the more reason to investigate."

***

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