Improvement

Five Years Later

New York City

Location: Unknown

Richard was inside a small room filled with some of the most advanced equipment the world had to offer. These were naturally expensive, but then again, he was the only son of a very rich woman.

Richard received a big allowance, which only got bigger as he grew but he had never used it for anything.

He didn't use a driver because there was no point when the school sent a bus to pick him up each day. There was no need for overpriced clothes when the same things could be bought for cheaper elsewhere.

Yes, Richard was the stingy millionaire, but in order for his plans to come to fruition in the future, he needed to minimize the amount of money he spent.

During the last five years, Richard had established any form of connection he could with the underworld just so he could get his hands on the equipment in this room.

Not only that, Richard had used his connection—his mother—to get in contact with very big names in the science community.

He met Tony Stark at some gala that he forced his mother to attend, and as usual, the dumbass tried to flirt with her but got rejected.

Acquiring the drunk man's knowledge was pretty easy. Hank Pym appeared at the same gala, as did Bruce Banner and many other names.

Getting to meet them wasn't hard, and acquiring their knowledge wasn't difficult either. Honestly, for someone like Richard, there was no place better than such a science meet.

The Stark Expo would have been another place, but none of the people he met there had truly helped him more than what he already knew.

At the moment, Richard was inside the room looking at a small containment unit the size of your average flash drive. The containment unit was transparent, allowing him to view the object or thing held within.

The unit contained some sort of liquid that was silver in color. A bit of common sense would tell anyone that this wasn't any form of liquid metal since the container was very cold, but it still didn't remove the fact that the liquid had a metallic look to it.

"Seven years of hard work and I still can't get the replacement program right," Richard said, somewhat frustrated.

"It seems I have to go bigger if I want this to work optimally," he added, turning to look at a section of the lab which contained a set of glasses and a small tablet-like device.

He had spent the last seven years working on whatever project this was, but it seemed that nothing was working.

It was either that he didn't have the knowledge to complete the project or that he simply wasn't creative enough to figure out how to complete it.

He doubted it was a knowledge problem; after all, he had knowledge from intellectual monsters like Hank Pym and Tony Stark, who had designed Ultron and JARVIS respectively.

Those were A.I.s that had done what people said was impossible.

Ultron had nearly destroyed the world on many occasions and had even ruled an entire Phalanx by himself, while JARVIS had always been there to hinder his plans on multiple occasions.

If he couldn't figure out a program way less powerful than A.I.s, then it wasn't a knowledge problem—it was a creativity problem.

"Let's hope the Baxters will be able to help," Richard said as he picked up the case containing the glasses and left the room.

His workshop—or lab, if you will—was located at the back of the house. The mansion had too much space in it for Richard to start creating some elaborate space for his work. It was just a simple shed at the back of the house.

He wasn't trying to hide it from anyone; no one could get into it, so there was no need to stress himself.

His mom already knew about his project, though she didn't know what it was for. She supported it just because she saw no harm in doing so.

Leaving his workshop, Richard immediately began walking towards the garage since he had somewhere to be at the moment.

Entering one of the four cars in the garage, Richard drove out, and several hours later, he was standing inside a white space that seemed to stretch on for eternity, facing a man who had a small beaker floating in front of him.

"Is this everything it is capable of?" the man asked as he conjured up a handgun, then made it transform into a beaker.

"Naturally, it is way beyond that. Mr. Storm, this space was created to replicate the real world in many ways," Richard explained.

And yes, the man was Franklin Storm, the father of the Storm siblings and the person the Powerhouse is named after.