TGS - #82

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The Ancient Kree City, Puerto Rico[May 2015]

–Jack Sullivan–

So, as it turned out, they were not happy with him essentially "Stealing" thousands of tons of worth of their land and transporting it to Mars.

Yeah, news travelled quickly around here. Mainly because they saw the portal reading to a red planet and also because they saw the disturbances happening on Mars because of the multitude of satellites they had stationed around Mars.

They tried to demand it back, at first but then he deadpanned at them, and resolved the issue of the stolen sand. A mere flex of his will created a huge green block above the entire area they were standing in, shrouding the area as far as he could see, in a green glow. Everyone looked at it fearfully, as it flew over to the ocean until it became nothing more than a dot, and then, just for dramatic purposes, he lifted his left hand and pointed his index finger down.

That caused the block to immediately sink into the ocean, until it reached the seabed, wherein it immediately began filling up on the nearby soiḷ. In minutes, it was full and he recalled it completely, all the while maintaining eye contact with the person who seems to be in charge here.

People began screaming and running away when the same barrier began heading back but he had to give credit where credit was due, the person in front of him never took a step, even if his legs did shake at the sounds his team was making.

Once again, the barrier returned but this time, it cast a much darker shadow all around them. The barrier then stopped atop the hole where the city used to be and then, as if it was just a truck unloading its load, dumped the soil into the hole, filling it completely.

The smell of the sea was prevalent in the air as he mockingly saluted the agent in front of him, "There, problem solved. Before you say anything, that sand was taken from the seabed that was more than 9 nautical miles away from the coast, making it outside of the maritime boundary. So, Good Day, agent…Hayes." 

God, it felt so good to be an asshole to these power hungry people, he thought to himself as he floated away and straight into a portal as they could do nothing but watch impotently. Oh, he was sure that he would have to answer to people much higher in the chain of command than Agent Hayes down there but eh, problem for another time.

Right now, he straight away went to Kamar Taj. He had a situation to explain to the Ancient One, about the entire Kree city thing. He was also wondering if a remote base could be established on Mars or not.

It would be a sick place to have a man cave, with nothing but stones and the occasional Mars Rover in sight.

It would also be quite funny to throw a beer can on the ROver and tell it to "get off my lawn" once the government inevitably used it to spy on his man cave.

Ah, nice dreams.

"Ah, Master Sullivan, what can I do for you?" The Ancient One was just standing there when he turned around the corner of a building.

"I was wondering if a warded base on Mars could be built?" He asked her with a shit eating grin.

____xx____

[~A Few Hours Later~]

As it turned out, it was possible to build an enchanted base on Mars but it would be ridiculously expensive to maintain. Not expensive as in Money but expensive as in the dimensional energy needed to run the enchantments.

A misconception regarding dimensional energy was cleared up for him by the Ancient One, in her lecture voice, which was not something she had to use a lot on him. While Dimensional energy flowed through every atom of the universe, serving as a near ideal source of energy for Sorcerers, it acted differently when there was no human soul involved which could direct its flow.

Dimensional Energy, in its base form, was just energy. A near unlimited and ever present source of energy but energy nonetheless. Dimensional energy literally could not be directed properly without a soul being used as a medium. It could be woven through enchantments and then kept that way, only if proper regular maintenance is done on it.

Now, if the enchantments were done on Earth, a magical hotspot in reality, they remain the same for extremely long periods of time, the very ambient energy on Earth feuling the enchantments.

That was when Mars' status as a dead planet came into view. There was no magical hotspot "special-ness" that Mars had, that could help the enchantments stay for long periods of time.

Relics stayed the same because they were forged by someone with a soul, interweaving dimensional and all other sorts of energy into an object, in the presence of Mother Earth as a magical guardian, allowing the Relics to hold onto the original magic for so long. And even then, if Relics are allowed to stay unused, with no magical soul using them, even the Relics break down and disappear.

To create some sort of base on Mars would require someone to actively pump dimensional energy into the enchantments at a regular interval and also to repair the enchantments themselves that would also break down at regular intervals.

All in all, quite a thankless and cumbersome endeavour. Even the Moon was feasible as a place to create a base, because of the presence of life and also due to its proximity to a magical hotspot such as Earth.

With that plan out of the way, he informed the Ancient One of his using his own powers to get help transporting that entire city to Mars. She warned him about the chances of the city being exposed to the harsh environment there due to the lack of any magical protection woven over it and he had assured that Wakanda would surely help to create a remote force field over the area where the city was buried, in exchange for the chance to study the city.

She had then asked him about his study in the field of countering reality warpers, something she had tasked him with since Wanda was last spotted in Australia.

She had handed him a book about Reality Warpers and their effect on reality and had told him point blank, to develop something to stop Wanda from using her powers on reality the next time they encountered the Scarlet Witch.

The way to anchor oneself into reality was not the same for everyone. He had to figure it out himself but it did give him hints in the form of using the thing closest to one's soul to anchor their metaphysical self to the plane, and what was closest to his soul other than his source of powers?

His Barriers. So, he had been working on enchanting his barriers themselves, and then using the enchantments to anchor himself and a small area himself, so that he could actually fight with Wanda. 

So far, in both of their encounters, she had been able to warp reality all around him such that he wasn't even able to feel the effects until the effect on the reality wore off. He had to atleast make sure that she wasn't able to affect reality around him in ways that made fighting her impossible.

His barriers would mean that anywhere his barriers went, the reality would be more solid, so to speak. It would be much harder to use her powers in that area because of the stronger reality.

Progress was slow but steady as he figured out ways of anchoring himself, along with a small area around him to reality, using dimensional energy, energy from the Vishanti, and infusing them into his barrier powers, all in order to create an anti reality warping field.

After updating her about his progress, he came over here.

Above the ocean where the spaceship was buried. It housed no one at the moment and ti had been weeks since he last came here but he was wondering what to do with the thing.

He was of the mind to let Tony, Wakanda, and somebody from SWORD, once they finally finished creating the damned agency, study the spaceship and help build Earth's first FTL spaceship, so that they can kick start the space age already.

He was not going to be there, all the time, to send NASA's huge Rovers outside the Asteroid Belt and then back all the time. Granted, each mission back and forth netted him a cool Billion Dollar, which was extremely helpful in funding every single venture he found cool, but it felt wrong somehow.

Dependency of that sort created on him would soon turn detrimental if allowed to fester for long.

So, Humanity's first spaceship project was born in his mind but then again, for that, he would need some sort of united front from Humanity to hand over the technology to. If given to just a single nation or a small collective of powerful nations, it would just create a hierarchy of weaker and more powerful nations.

The more powerful nations would grow even stronger once they had access to space and all the ludicrous amounts of resources that were just waiting to be tapped. It would destabilise everything and that was the last thing he wanted.

Last time he had a chat with the authorities, he was assured that work was ongoing with the whole SWORD project and it would be up and running soon. Well, their "soon" did not seem to be aligned with his expectations, or that of humanity at large.

Typical governmental activities.

Welp, time to rectify them, he thought to himself as he opened a portal that led to Washington DC.

He took a step forward and breathed in the fresh air, well, as fresh as it could be. The presence of politicians in the city meant that he would not be able to enjoy anything in this city.

He sighed and slowly, with no stealth whatsoever, floated towards the White House, which was visible to his enhanced eyesight. At his current speed, it should take less than 5 minutes to reach the gates, which should give the Secret Service plenty of time to prepare themselves.

Immediately, he could see movement in his vision as people scrambled around the gate, inside the gate, as well as the areas in front of the gate. He could see multiple police cars with their lights on, heading straight towards him, some heading straight to the White House as well.

He could see agents magically appearing on the rooftops of buildings around the White House, with heavy weaponry. Helicopters became airborne and began heading straight towards him.

All in the span of 2 minutes.

Impressive.

Well, it would have been if they were able to do all this without gorging on the absolutely bloated Military Budget that the government gave them every year. Still, it was quite a turnout, for just a single person.

Granted, that single person was him, the Green Guardian and it must have been really stressful for them as he simply landed on the street, absolutely littered by law enforcement on all sides. Thankfully, he was not able to see any red lasers pointed at his body with the threat of snipers shooting his brains out.

That would have been….useless.

His ears could still pick up on the absolute beehive of activity that was happening around the areas surrounding him. The President was probably getting escorted to the Bunker underground, or to some vehicle that would get him away. In which case, the Military was not far behind.

OR, the President was handling the situation like he should and any moment now, someone from the Secret Service would come ahead and call for him, as any sane politician with the weight of an entire country on his shoulders would do.

After all, it was not as if he had not just lifted an entire city from the ground and thrown it on another planet. What was a reinforced bunker in comparison?

He just looked around, at all the law enforcement that surrounded him, with none of their usual guns in sight. Actually, no officer of the law that he could see, from atleast three different agencies, had their weapons out.

Even the Helicopters that floated right above him did not have their weapons primed. 

Huh, so they were told to just surround him but not point anything at him. Someone had brains in the chain of command then.

"Hiya, sir!" He waved at the closest police officer, quite a young fellow by the looks of it whose entire body trembled when he was addressed.

The police officer swallowed loudly and then pointed at himself, "M-me?"

"Yes, sir! May I have a few moments of your time?" He was being polite here, plus it was quite fun to watch everybody's reactions as well as the rookie's.

The rookie marched towards him, with a resigned expression on his face, as if he was marching straight to his death.

"So, can you point me to the White House, my good sir? I actually have a meeting with the President." The rookie looked at him as if he was a ghost.

He then leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, "Actually, I don't actually have an appointment and was hoping that he would accommodate me in his busy schedule. Anyway, thank you for the directions." He said and after patting the poor man on his shoulders, began walking slowly to the White House.

He could feel everybody's sphincter tightening but after waiting a beat for any response from them, he resumed walking, after seeing no response.

He whistled and waved at all the people around him, some of them waving back and some just looking back dumbly, as he began the walk to cover the final distance to the gate of the White House.

The Secret Service arrived in front of him in a series of SUVs, as if they were the last bosses in the game.

One of them came forward and extended his hand, "Good Afternoon, Mr.Sullivan. Please follow me, the President is waiting."

He shook the agent's hand and then entered the SUV that was being gestured to.

Well, it would seem the President was not just a spineless politician then. 

Nice to know that he could be reasoned with. He could see SWORD's creation being hastened.

Word Count - 2473

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