As Alex got to work making Apex City a functional authority over all people with magical capabilities, Wanda made sure to keep interrupting him such that the two of them spent a significant amount of time relaxing and enjoying each other's company.
In the meantime, light years away from this clusterfuck of Earths, Jane and Alex's spaceship had finally reached Morag.
"Okay, this complicates things…" Jane spoke as she looked at the scanner's output of the planet in front of their ship. "Is this planet supposed to be submerged in water like that? The closest bedrock is… twenty-seven thousand meters underwater as per the scanners."
"Not only does this complicate things, it also makes our entire fucking trip useless," Alex said with frustration. "Do you know how many things I took care of in the two fucking weeks that we god damn wasted doing nothing but traveling?"
"I get it, dude, you've been frustrated," she said irritably with an underlying dryness. "It's not my fault that you decided to look for the Power Stone on the most inconvenient-to-reach planet. What do you want me to do, huh?"
"Don't do anything," he said coldly before walking away.
"Where are you going?"
"Out."
Walking to the back of the ship, Alex went in through a small door at the side.
Jane looked at him with an annoyed expression as he unlocked the airlock from the control panel and exited the spaceship.
"Seriously?" She groaned with frustration and stepped into the cockpit. She noticed a black mass floating toward the planet in front of them that continued getting bigger.
"You're not gonna do what I think… are you?" Jane had a premonition as she looked at the slime that was getting larger and larger despite the fact that Alex was moving away from the spaceship with every passing second.
Suddenly, a beam of red light shot out of the ever-increasing mass of slime.
Jane's eyes widened at the ensuing impact that split apart the ocean that covered the entire planet. According to the scans, it was close to the size of Earth, if a bit on the smaller side. The raw energy that Alex was releasing was going to obliterate that planet into pieces.
[What the fuck are you doing!]
[Quiet, Jane. I'm not exactly in the best mood right now.]
[You are going to destroy that planet! Stop!]
[I have zero interest in listening to you right now. Stay quiet and let me see if that planet has the Power Stone… or any Infinity Stone, for that matter.]
The crimson beam suddenly intensified and grew significantly thicker. Not only that, Alex's body was still growing larger at an ever-increasing pace.
[Morag is an inhabited planet, Alex. You are going to kill trillions with this.]
[It doesn't matter. There is no intelligent life here.]
Jane's expression grew increasingly horrified as the planet started to look deformed, with the water vaporizing and splitting away from the crimson beam.
[I can't just sit by and let this happen.]
Jane's expression turned from horrified to determined as she summoned Hofund. Her hands were already up in the air as she tightly gripped the handle of the sword that appeared and swung it down with a powerful grunt. A colorless arc was released that cleaved through the hull of the spaceship, rendering it nothing more than scrap metal. The arc continued undaunted and sliced through Alex's body, interrupting the crimson beam that he was releasing.
The following grunt of pain that Alex released reverberated through Jane's head. It echoed as her mind suddenly went blank, unable to process anything beyond that grunt. Her fingers lost their strength as Hofund slipped from her grip—immediately disappearing before the sudden vacuum could affect it. Jane stood unaffected as the glass in front of her cracked completely, and all of the air within the cabin was expelled. She looked unaffected beyond a slight ruffling of her clothes, yet her mind was in turmoil.
[You shouldn't have done that, Jane.]
The voice that she heard in her head was devoid of any warmth. The previous cold tone Alex had used to talk to her was nothing compared to the icy chill that crept up her spine when he spoke those words in her head. The effects of the sudden change in air pressure went away as soon as they came, turning the environment within the ship the same as the vacuum in outer space. Yet, the coldest sensation Jane felt came from Alex right now.
[I'm…]
The woman's thoughts froze as she felt a deep fear impact her mind and soul. The massive slime in front of the ship quickly recovered from the attack and continued expanding, looking undaunted and unaffected by the attack. Yet Jane couldn't think about any of that as she saw a black slime creep through the broken glass in front of her and form into Alex.
He silently kept looking at her as she stayed frozen in her spot with a blank, confused expression on her face.
[I think we're done, Jane.]
[What?] Her telepathic thought was cracked.
Alex didn't say anything and turned around to look at the huge mass of black that he'd left behind. Within seconds, it had grown large enough to blot out half of the planet's surface. Jane couldn't muster up any more thoughts to stop Alex as the slime kept expanding. In the following minutes, the entire planet of Morag was wrapped up by an outer-space horror that devoured it, leaving behind no traces of it ever existing in the first place.
[No stone… I guess we can get this over with in this case.]
[Alex…]
[It's not going to work out between us, Jane. Our ideologies are completely different. I don't have the patience to coddle and baby you for the rest of eternity. God, I don't think I can stand being with you for a few more years, let alone eternity. Even dealing with Alter Gwen was far less frustrating for me. And she had all the valid reasons to despise me. What about you, Jane? You have been a bitch to me from the start…]
"W-what are you talking about?" Jane asked, too muddled to use telepathy as an uncomfortable, suffocating feeling spread through her entire body. It had nothing to do with the vacuum and everything to do with the emotions that Alex was radiating that were directly felt by her soul.
[Exactly what you think. We aren't compatible. There is no point in us continuing this dysfunctional relationship with you that will make both of us miserable.]
[But you would be left weakened… You've already bound yourself to me on a deeper level.]
[I'll manage. Don't worry, I'll make sure that it doesn't hurt you. You won't feel a thing.]
Suddenly, the literal devouring of Morag seemed like such an inconsequential thing that Jane couldn't even bother to think about it. Alex's words were the only thing echoing through her head.
Seeing her silence, he raised his hand and laxly pointed at her with his fingers. Jane couldn't understand what he was doing, but as another second passed, she felt a profound sense of weakness spread through her entire body.
Alex's face was impassive and flat as black slime was pulled out of Jane's figure. She fell down on one knee, tightly holding on to Mjolnir's handle for support. Soon, she felt a pull on her skin. It was horribly painful as if her skin itself was being ripped away from her skeleton. Yet, Alex didn't stop or even slow down as he continued pulling himself away from Jane.
As the process continued, a sudden stirring of Chaos energy made Alex frown.
Suddenly, crimson Chaos Energy amalgamated beside Alex and coalesced into Wanda's figure.
"Why are you here, Wanda?" Alex asked as the redhead opened her eyes with concern shining in them.
"Why are you hurting yourself?" She didn't give a single look at the woman kneeling in pain, as Alex was the only person in her eyes. "You are in pain…"
"It's nothing," Alex said. "It'll be over soon."
"Don't lie to me. Do you think I can't sense it? Stop it; you already have a better solution. Why are you hurting yourself like this?"
"I thought you would be happy that I'm getting rid of one of my anchors," Alex said with a casual smile.
"You're hurting yourself… I can feel it, Alex. Let me help you, at least," Wanda started creating a complex crimson crystal structure in front of him.
"No," he said as hints of strain appeared in his voice. He grabbed Wanda's hand and stopped her from completing her spell. "I want this pain."
"Why? You aren't a repressed masochist, are you? Is that why you act sadistic every so often? To compensate."
"Heh," Alex couldn't stop himself from snorting at Wanda's words. "My hosts matter to me. Every single one of them. You, Nat, both Gwens, and Laura. You are all very important to me. Breaking a primary bond is a very, very big deal for me. Back when I bonded with MJ, it was because I wasn't completely in control of my actions and thoughts. It was a mistake to bond with her in the first place. And Jane? The only reason I went after her was because I was greedy for the ability to use Hofund and manipulate Cosmic energy. That's all. There weren't any feelings involved with her either. I'm simply rectifying that mistake."
"At least let me support you…" Wanda said as she hugged him tightly. "The others might be too weak to endure this, but not me. Please… let me share your burdens."
Without waiting for Alex's response, Wanda tapped into their connection and used her power to invoke the ‹True Merge› state.
The pain that she felt in the brief moment before her merger with Alex was enough to almost collapse her soul instantly. That was the pain that Alex had been enduring throughout the process, while Jane was feeling too weak to even stay entirely conscious. His soul was constantly going through the pain of literally splitting away a part of itself.
Despite all of the enhancements Wanda had received after assimilating with the Source of Chaos, in terms of the soul, she didn't even come close to him.
A distorted voice that sounded like the amalgamation of Wanda's and Alex's voices reverberated through Jane's head just before she lost consciousness.
[Goodbye, Jane. Take care of yourself.]
With the last of her vision, she noticed Alex's figure disappearing as a red glow covered him.
-x-X-x-
Ultimately, breaking his bond with Jane may have been painful, but it had practically no long-term effects on him. With the shallow level two bond he had with her, there was little backlash that he had to deal with. If anything, it was worse when he broke his bond with MJ, considering that he'd already formed the Level 3 bond with her while Jane was barely at Level 2. As for ‹Lightning Divinity›, the three variants of Thor he devoured did more to enhance the ability than Jane ever could.
As his multiple bodies dealt with their respective situations, Alex was intent on truly gaining something significant after he got rid of Jane. And that something was one of the reasons that he decided to move away from Jane. There was another, much better person he had in mind for a primary bond on one of the Earths that he'd been exploring.
Earth-121698B
This planet was similar to the ones that had first formed into Gaia. Both those Earths had practically no superhero presence beyond the existence of Spider-Man and his related characters. This one was very similar, where the only prominent superhero presence here was that of the Fantastic Four and Doctor Doom. This Earth was the primary reason that made Alex wary about the non-existence of Doom in any reality that he'd gone to. He was forced to come to terms that his multiversal variants were most likely planning something huge. The fact that even some obscure variant of the man, from an Earth that doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, was also nowhere to be found cemented that belief. At some point in time, the numerous variants of Doom were going to launch an attack, and they were another thing that he had to be prepared for.
In the meantime, he wanted to form a primary bond with one of the women with the most versatile powers in the universe. Susan Storm. Luckily for him, the version of her on this Earth was in one of the most convenient situations for Alex to not only bond with her but also not antagonize Reed Richards. If anything, he wanted to play things in a way that would make it so that Reed would end up joining his Research team and help Gwen develop a Dragon Ball Radar for Infinity Stones. The two of them, alone, weren't having much luck with it despite having spent over a year working on it, and Alex believed that adding one of the brightest minds in the universe might help with their little problem.
The four had just returned from their expedition to space after being blasted by the cosmic cloud, and were unconscious when they were brought here. With some machinations from Alex, the four of them maintained their unconscious state for over a month while he covertly took over their planet's complete administration structure. The main issue was whether he was going to take over Doom's persona, or if he was going to simply act as if he were the new CEO of the man's company after he was ousted by his shareholders. That state of indecision had lasted for a week as he continued medically delaying the awakening of the to-be Fantastic Four.
Ultimately, after seeing the massive power that Wanda now held, Alex became a bit more confident about surviving in front of cosmic threats. Once he made his decision, he didn't hesitate before breaking his bond with Jane. The woman's own power was all borrowed from external Asgardian weapons, and he couldn't just devour those weapons for their abilities, which meant that even if he deepened the bond with her, there was little chance that he could the cosmic energy manipulation that she possessed. Adding to that, their sheer incompatibility, his decision to break the bond didn't cause him to hesitate for long.
While he could have maintained his bond with Jane and simply made a move on Susan, he wanted to keep the primary bonds limited to six in total. He didn't want to give his full focus to any more aspects of himself than that. Of course, the secondary and tertiary bonds were a different thing. He didn't mind making as many of those as needed. That's because secondary bonds were easy to deal with since he wasn't actively involved in every action that those women took. While he had a direct line with them, it was limited to simple communication. The tertiary bonds were even easier since all he gave them was a rudimentary version of his symbiote form, with certain activations for whenever they needed to do something. They didn't even have a direct line of communication with him.
Now, however, it was time for him to get himself a bond with a woman who possessed one of the most broken powers in the universe. The funniest thing was that she had no idea about how truly broken her powers were, and reduced them to invisibility and forcefield creation.
…
Alex, in the form of Victor Von Doom, walked through his penthouse suite and entered a large bedroom with a full floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the New York City skyline. A few blocks in the distance was the Baxter Building, while some distance away from it was the Headquarters of Von Doom Co. It was an aeronautics company founded by Victor, and was the reason that the Fantastic Four could even make their foray into space and get their powers.
The room, however, was filled with multiple large monitors and medical monitoring equipment. On the bed lay a woman who had all of that equipment attached to her through various means and had an IV drip attached to her arm. Her blonde hair was splayed all over her pillow, and a peaceful expression was on her face. Despite having been bedridden for almost two months now, there were no traces of her being malnourished. She was Susan Storm, staying separately from her other three teammates, who were staying in a private medical facility that belonged to Doom's company.
"Damn, I'd forgotten how beautiful she was…" Alex mumbled as he looked at her. "Do I still want to pretend to be her boyfriend, or just be open with her from the start… I don't want a repeat of what happened with Gwen, that's for sure. But she has a weirdly headstrong personality, and that might make the relationship full of conflict, like with Jane. There's no way in hell I'm going to pretend to be Doom all the time, that's for sure."
He continued looking at her face while deep in thought about what he had to do.
"I would've just killed Reed and been done with it, but these four have that weird cosmic resonance thing going as well… I can't be sure she will keep her powers if one of them dies. While it's possible that might not happen because there are other versions of Reed in this universe, I can't take that risk."
After spending almost thirty minutes deep in thought, he decided on his plan of action and raised his arm. A black mass shot out and struck Susan Storm's stomach before being absorbed into her. Since he had no plans of separating from her, he directly formed a level one bond with her. To go any deeper, she needed to be awake and accepting of his actions at a minimum.
{ «Status- Host #6»
«Name: Susan Storm (Invisible Woman)»
«Bonding Rate: 0%»
«Bonding Level: 1»
«Powers: Hyperspace Physique — Ambient Cosmic Manipulation — Hyperspace Psionics Manifestation»
}
Alex felt a sense of giddiness the moment he saw her powers highlighted on Susan's status panel. Although he himself was the one who aligned her abilities into those three categories, visibly seeing them highlighted on his new host's status panel was a different feeling altogether. He'd chosen ‹Hyperspace Physique› for the ability that made her cells able to interact with ambient light and cosmic energy and turn her invisible, ‹Ambient Cosmic Manipulation› for her ability to control the interaction of ambient cosmic energy with her cells, and ‹Hyperspace Psionics Manipulation› for her ability to create invisible psionic constructs.
"All right…lots of schemes… The first thing that I need to do is to send Reed and Ben away to Research Earth. They can contribute to my Infinity Stone Radar while also staying away from Susan. Keeping Reed away is the only way that I have of forming a relationship with this Susan…without modifying her memories…we all know how that went," Alex spoke to himself before glancing at Susan again. "Once those two are sent away, then it's going to be time to wake her up. In the meantime, I'm going to analyze her physique and see if I can replicate her cells so that I can somehow interact with ambient cosmic energy."
As Alex continued his musings, a nurse knocked on the door, and he beckoned her inside. She demurely entered and mumbled a polite greeting to Alex and started taking notes of Susan's vitals. Alex didn't disturb her and was mostly focused on delving into the makeup of Susan's new and mutated cells to see what her physique was all about. He left the woman to her work and made his way to the medical facility where Susan's brother Johnny, Reed, and Ben were stationed.
-x-X-x-
As Reed opened his eyes, he was greeted with a distasteful vision—the face of Victor Von Doom staring down at him.
"Good morning, Reed," he said, standing in front of the bed, looking down at Reed with his usual infuriating smirk. Beside him was an unfamiliar man with jet black hair who had his arms crossed and an impassive expression.
"Victor," Reed said with a slightly hoarse voice. Looking to the side, he grabbed a glass of water and downed it in one gulp.
"A lot happened in the world while you were enjoying your time unconscious," he said.
"Did World War Three happen?" He chuckled. "Who is this?"
"That would have been the better alternative, honestly," Victor said before gesturing to the man beside him. "This is Apex. He comes from a parallel version of our planet."
"What are you talking about?" Reed said. "Like the multiverse? That shouldn't work like that."
"It does. That and a whole lot more, Reed," Victor said. "Try to grab that glass."
"What?" Reed looked across the room where a glass filled with water was placed. "I can't reach it."
"Humor me," Victor said.
Giving Victor a confused and slightly concerned look, Reed extended his arm in the direction of the glass. Suddenly, it stretched forward, making him widen his eyes as he grasped the glass with a shaky grip, as his arm retracted and came back. He was left looking at it with a gaze of confusion and wonder.
"What's going on?" He spoke, moving his other arm and trying to stretch it again.
"The cosmic storm that you went through induced a significant mutation in your cells, turning them into a unique biological rubberized substance," Victor said.
"I see… What about the others?" Reed asked.
"Everyone has reacted to these things differently. Ben hasn't shown any reactions yet, and Johnny has fire powers."
"What about Sue?" Reed asked, only to receive a hardened look from Victor.
"She is currently isolated and has asked for her information to be kept from you," Victor said. "Now, before you say anything else, allow me to tell you why this person is here."
Reed frowned, as if unwilling to accept the fact that Susan wanted to distance herself from him. "Yeah… Please."
"Allow me to explain, Mr. Von Doom," Apex spoke up. "The current situation of this entire universe is very precarious. And no, this is not your universe. Some external power yanked about forty different versions of Earth from all across the multiverse and put them all together in this cluster. I have no idea who, or what that power is. But I do know that your planet is one of the most vulnerable ones among the forty…"
He explained the gist of the situation to Reed, about the Convergence, and the fact that there were tonnes of superpowered people all over the other Earths, while their Earth only had the four of them who had newly received their powers.
"It's hard to wrap my head around all this…" Reed said.
"I understand that, Mr. Richards," Apex said. "Fortunately, you do not really need to worry about your planet. Let me come to the primary reason that I am here. This planet will soon join the Gaia cluster. It is a collective of planets that are all under my protection and governance. Every planet has a representative leader who sits on the Apex Council, which is chaired by me, but that's not important right now. What is important is that I wish to utilize your smarts for an important project on one of the other Earths. You will receive grants, a working space according to your requirements, and whatever else you ask for as long as you can provide the result."
"What exactly does this project entail?" Reed asked, frowning. "I will not be creating a weapon."
"Unless you accept, you will not be given any details, but I can clarify that you won't be creating any weapons. What I need is a detector."
"What kind—" Apex shook his head with a stern expression, making Reed swallow. "What about money? What kind of resources will I have access to?"
"The collective resources of four planets combined," Apex said. "Gaia currently holds three versions of Earth with planetary barriers. Once your Earth is added, there will be four. This project is important enough that you will have all the resources that you might require. Of course, for supervision and support, my current lead researcher will be working with you on this. She is well aware of the project's requirements and has been working on it for over a year now."
"I can't do this alone," Reed said."At the very least, I need my partner."
"I am aware of that," Apex nodded. "We will be transferring both you and Mr. Ben Grimm to Gaia as well."
Reed nodded with a thoughtful expression on his face.
"Take the time that you need. I will be departing for Gaia tomorrow morning. I hope that you can come with me, Mr. Richards. The fate of not only your planet, but all of the planets under Gaia hangs in the balance."
"No pressure…" Reed chuckled as Apex left him and Victor alone. "Think I can refuse?"
"Unless you'd like for this planet to be exploited out of its resources and destroyed," he said. "You've been unconscious, but I've seen it. Forty identical planets in the sky. I have seen copies of you, Susan, your precious Baxter Building. As for the Gaia Cluster he's talking about, it consists of two planets surrounded by individual planetary barriers that are interconnected by the same barrier."
"Two?"
"The third is separate. Its position hasn't yet aligned with the other two to join with them. He has already pretty much made all of the world's leaders kneel at his feet and accept the integration into Gaia. You are the first person whom he has politely asked to work for him. You can refuse, sure, but I wouldn't recommend it. Not unless you care about your planet."
"So he's a dictator," Reed concluded.
"Virtually, yes. But his presence has forced every country to recall its troops from warring nations. Also, every nuke that we have has allegedly been disarmed, with production of new ones being banned completely. This is the closest we've come to world peace. Someone having a controlling stake isn't all bad."
"You aren't one to get down on your knees for any old person who comes along, Victor," Reed said. "What's your angle?"
"Heh…" Victor couldn't help but laugh lightly as a sense of desolation appeared in his eyes. "Because resistance is entirely hopeless. You cannot hope to contend against eldritch horrors that come right out of the horror stories of old, Reed."
"What are you saying?" Reed felt uncomfortable as he saw how Victor looked frail and weak, with no signs of strength on his face.
"I had this prepared in case you were dicey about this whole thing," he said before grabbing a remote and turning on the screen. "Look at this. This is an unnamed habitable planet in another corner of our galaxy."
It was a clear image of a blue planet that was covered in water all over. Reed frowned as he saw a faint silhouette appearing on the screen in the space. "Is that…"
"Apex, yes," Victor nodded. "He's casually floating in space overlooking what seems like a planet with a full ecosystem and living creatures."
"Why are you highlighting…that?" Reed swallowed his words as Apex transformed into a massive, slimy creature with tentacles extending out toward the planet. It continued growing in size at an ever-increasing pace. Soon, a red glow appeared from the slime before a powerful beam of red energy directly struck the water-based planet. "Is he going to…"
"Keep watching," Victor said, crossing his arms and noticeably shuddering at the view of the black mass expanding into space while the planet ahead of it was being destroyed by the red beam. When the red beam stopped, the creature had grown large enough to hide a significant part of the planet from the point of view of the camera. Seconds later, the slimy creature had wrapped itself around the broken planet and devoured everything, not leaving the slightest traces that there ever used to be a planet there. It then turned back to Apex, who had an annoyed expression on his face. That was when the video ended.
"That… thing ate a planet, Reed," Victor said. "Instead of going against such an entity, I would much rather be his ally. And the only one who can facilitate that is you, Reed."
"How did you get this information?" Reed frowned. "Our satellites can't capture something so far away. Especially something that happened recently."
"It was a data transmission spread all around," he said. "You remember the arc of energy that forced him to pause that red beam? It was the same person who practically broadcast this footage all across the galaxy."
Reed frowned. "I'll be working for someone who can destroy a planet without a second thought, Victor. I don't know how I feel about this."
"You'll be working for someone who currently possesses absolute control over your planet. On a positive note, the two planets that are a part of Gaia, I've seen them with my satellite. The general quality of life on both of them is ridiculously better. Give it a chance. Once you see how things are, I'm sure you will like it. Plus, you can always refuse to work after you start. Maybe you can get some leverage. Think about it, talk to Ben as well. He is also awake."
-x-X-x-
The sun was shining directly in her eyes when she woke up, making her squint and put her arm over her face. After a few seconds, as her eyes got used to the light, she removed her arm and sat up with a frown on her face.
"That cosmic storm," she spoke to herself before taking a look at her surroundings. She was in the middle of a large double bed with medical equipment on both sides. She then realized that she was wearing a hospital gown and felt the presence of the electrodes, heart rate monitor, and other monitoring equipment attached to her body. The rest of the room was mostly empty, with a large TV across from her and a massive window on her left. "Where's the door?" She spoke with a confused expression, seeing that the other three sides of the room were all clear walls with seemingly no way to enter or exit the room. "Am I being quarantined?" She asked out loud, hoping for a response.
"Good morning, Miss Storm," a woman's voice came through a speaker in a remote beside her. "My name is Alice, and I am your nurse. I've been taking care of you for the past two months."
"Months?" Susan frowned.
"Unfortunately, yes. You've been in a coma for two months," she said.
"What about the others? My brother, Reed, Ben…Victor." She had a slightly complicated feeling when she thought of the self-absorbed man she was currently dating.
"They are all fine, as far as I am aware. Unfortunately, their information wasn't shared with me since they are in a separate facility."
Susan frowned, feeling a creeping suspicion. "What do you mean by a different facility?"
"Your situation is a little unique, which is why you are in quarantine right now. They don't have such issues and are in a normal medical facility. I don't know much more about it, you'll have to ask Mr. Von Doom about the rest."
"I see," Susan nodded. "So where am I?"
"This is a military facility," she said. "I am not at liberty to tell you anything more."
"Can I meet Victor?"
"Yes, of course. He was notified the moment you woke up. He should be here within the hour."
"I understand… Thanks, Alice."
The connection was cut off with a beep from the remote, and Susan was left staring out through the window silently.
"Military facility… Then why is the view outside the same as my bedroom in Victor's apartment?"
She thought about getting out of bed, but then saw the numerous wires attached all over her body before choosing to sigh and lie back down.
"At least the bed is more comfortable than anything I've ever seen before... Two months…" She had a thought and grabbed the remote beside her to turn on the TV. "Cable? At least get me Netflix. I'm an accomplished scientist, for god's sake. I don't even have my phone." She sighed before switching to a news channel to see what was going on in the world after she disappeared for two months.
After switching through a few, she saw a repeat report that made her widen her eyes.
"…when a New York Fire Department truck became part of the tragedy. But the rescue itself is not the story. One of the three stretched to an amazing length to help keep the firefighter from falling to certain death…" The broadcast switched between three different people.
"That's Reed, and Johnny…" By deduction and simple reasoning, Sue could only conclude that the third man, made entirely of rocks, was also someone she knew. "Ben?"
"And now, to a live interview of one of the Terrific Three, Mr. Johnny Storm." The screen shifted to Susan's brother with a smug smile on his face.
"What the fuck…" Susan couldn't help but curse as she heard her brother go on a spiel about how awesome he was and how he was the leader of the team. Soon, Reed intervened and clarified the situation by announcing that they would be going off-world to one of the other Earths for an important research project.
"Other Earth, what?" She shook her head and directly turned off the TV, choosing to look outside the window instead. Suddenly, she noticed something that made her skin crawl. There were huge spherical shadows in the sky, looking larger than the moon. She didn't need to focus too much to make sense of that and realized that those were the other Earths that Reed was talking about.
"It's decided. I'm dreaming… I just need to go back to sleep, and when I wake up, everything will be normal again…" Susan closed her eyes, wanting to go back to sleep despite being fully energized and awake. Almost miraculously, it took her barely a few seconds to fall back into a deep slumber.
…
When Susan regained consciousness, she heard the sound of hissing, which made her squint her eyes and look at its source. The wall behind her bed had receded into a doorway. A figure wearing a thick hazmat suit walked in and stood beside her.
"Alice?" She asked without looking at the face of the figure.
"No, it's me," what came through a speaker in the suit was Victor's voice. "How do you feel?"
"All things said, pretty good," she said. "Like I just woke up from a comfortable nap. What's going on, Victor? What's happening here?"
"I know just as much as you do right now," he said. "That cosmic storm caused some mutation in your cells that is causing them to morph and transform. Unlike the other three, there is a chance that your transformed cells are deadly to others. If you come into direct contact with anyone, it can cause significant problems."
"Oh…" Susan didn't really process the words due to the shock of the situation.
"Do you know what happened with the others? Reed, Ben, Johnny?"
"Yeah," Susan said.
"What you may not know is that I am also joining Reed and Ben on their expedition."
"Johnny?"
"He's staying here. This…off-world opportunity. It is a research project for Apex. Johnny can't contribute anything to it."
"Who?"
"You'll know when he gets here. In a few minutes, he'll come and meet you. He will also explain everything about this situation to you."
"Hmm…"
"Um…Susan, also, considering the circumstances and the fact that I'm going to be away for who knows how long. I think it's better if…you know…we separate for a while."
"Yeah, whatever," she waved her arm.
"You aren't even listening to me, right now, are you?"
"We're broken up. I got it. You don't have any answers for me, so you might as well leave now. Looking at that suit you're in only makes things worse."
With a faint hum and a nod, Victor stepped back toward the wall as it opened up with a hiss. When he left, it closed back down, leaving Susan isolated and confused.
She suddenly groaned. "This is bullshit." Annoyed, she directly got rid of the IV drip attached to her arm before yanking off the electrodes attached all over her body. Lastly, she took off the pulse-ox on her finger and finally got out of bed. "I can't believe him…" She stood in front of the window, overlooking the New York skyline and the cars going all over the streets. "To think they would just go off-world like this without even talking to me. I'm in this situation just as much as they are. Now, I'm stuck in some military facility, quarantined, and probably going to get experimented on by this Apex whatever."
With an angry grunt, she punched the glass. Suddenly, a cracking sound reached her ears, making her widen her eyes. It wasn't the glass that cracked—her fist never even made contact with it. What was cracking was the air between her fist and the glass. Suddenly, she realized that her arm had disappeared from her vision.
"What the…" She looked at her body with morbid fascination. "I can turn invisible... But what was that cracking?" The cracks in the air had disappeared, but she tried to focus on them to see what was going on, but it was useless. Everything had turned completely back to normal.
As she drew closer to having an existential crisis, the door hissed again. Without putting any thought into her plan, she turned invisible and dropped the hospital gown before kicking it under the bed.
"Greetings, Miss…Storm," a man with black hair, wearing a blazer, entered the room and paused after not seeing her present.
She didn't think about the fact that the man wasn't in a hazmat suit, unlike her now ex-boyfriend. She just wanted to get out of here. So, she slipped past him and tried to enter the doorway before it closed. Just as she pushed her foot through the doorway, a powerful electric shock assaulted her foot. She cried out in pain and immediately recoiled. In that time, she had lost the opportunity to escape, and the door closed right in her face. As a consequence of the shock, she was now visible, and unfortunately for her, entirely naked.
"I won't turn to look at you," the unfamiliar man said. "Do you mind turning invisible again and putting on the hospital gown?"
"Fine," her voice sounded almost pouty as she turned invisible again and walked back around the bed to pick up and pull the hospital gown over her head. She then turned visible again and finally looked at the man with a slightly awkward smile. "Hi…" Then she realized that he wasn't wearing a hazmat suit like Victor had been. "Shouldn't you…you know. Keep yourself protected?"
"Those precautions are necessary for people who have a chance to get radiation poisoning by being in your presence," he said. "I am Apex, and I am the leader of the Gaia Federation."
"Gaia?" Susan asked with a slight frown on her face.
"We are still a budding organization, but our core purpose is to bring vulnerable Earths under our protection. The ones that don't have any defences against alien invasions and don't have a lot of superpowered individuals to fight for their continued survival. This planet, Earth-121698B, is our current acquisition target."
"So you are going to take over my planet?" She said, her frown deepening and turning slightly hostile.
"Nothing like that, Miss Storm. Everything stays the same. Your governing system stays the same, your laws all stay the same, you simply join under the protective umbrella of a federation that will keep this planet from being acquired by a more direct entity. The benefits of joining include the cessation of all wars and the surrender of all nuclear armaments. This has already happened, just hasn't been made public yet."
"So why are you here?" She asked.
"You are the reason I'm here," he said. "You are special, Miss Storm."
"I have invisibility powers, that's hardly anything that someone with authority over multiple planets would be concerned about."
Apex suddenly laughed out loud in her face. "It's a cute mentality that you have. But it also limits you significantly. What I want to do is teach you to harness your power to its fullest potential and help me protect my Gaia Federation. I will teach you about your true power, and I will also make sure that your little consequence of irradiating people can be dealt with."
"What are you talking about?"
"Do you mind lying back down? I need to attach these monitors back to your body," he said. "I'll explain everything in the meantime."
"Are you a doctor?" She asked.
"I'll tell you about myself in time," Apex said as Susan got back into the bed and slid toward the middle, where her one pillow was. Apex sat down beside her and grabbed the pulse-oximeter clip to put it over her finger. "Give me your hand."
"So? What's this about me irradiating people around me?"
"As you have already seen, you can make light perfectly bend around you without any distortion, which makes you invisible. This is done through a mutation that spontaneously occurs in your cells. From our scans, your body resonates with an as-of-yet unknown frequency in the environment and rapidly mutates your cells to make light bend around you. This transformation immediately releases between ten and twenty Gray of ionizing gamma radiation lasting between one and two seconds at a distance of 1 meter from you. For context, imagine yourself as a one-kilogram block of Cobalt-60. If you transform while someone's holding your hand, their skin will start melting after being exposed to tens of thousands of Sieverts of radiation."
"So when I tried to leave…" Susan said.
"Yeah… I know this seems like a prison, but that's only temporary. In my lesson plans to teach you how to use your powers, there is a section to teach you to contain this radiation. A month tops, and you will be a free woman. You have my word."
"Thanks."
"Do you mind sitting up? I need to attach these to your back," he said.
She nodded and sat up, pulling her hair forward. "So what about you?" She asked. "Why aren't you wearing a suit? Not worried about being affected by radiation?"
"Miss Storm—"
"Call me Susan. I don't like so many formalities."
"Susan," he corrected himself. "The stability of my cells is on a level that radiation cannot affect me. I could have walked into Chernobyl on the day of the disaster and stayed there for a year without ever being affected."
"That's not possible," she said with a frown.
"For a human, maybe. But I'm not a human. My species is the peak of all biological life. Concepts like ageing, disease…they don't apply to us."
"You're an alien?"
"Yeah."
"You're an alien…" She did a double-take. "An alien is in control of my planet."
"Yeah, well, there's a little caveat to being the peak biological race in the universe. We are symbiotic creatures. While we can survive without a host, we need to form a symbiotic relationship with a host if we want to show our full capabilities. I currently have five hosts. All of them are humans and on different planets, helping me slowly expand Gaia's reach and bring more planets under our umbrella."
"Wait, back up for a bit. What do you mean you have five hosts? How does that work?"
"While I appear as a human to you, my true form is that of an amorphous slime," he said. "See?" he raised his palm, and a black substance was released from his skin to form a slime. Seconds later, it disappeared back into his palm. "I can separate parts of my body while maintaining full control over both of them."
"So, like clones?"
"More like different limbs," he said. "I have just as much of an active control over one part of my body as I do over another, even if they are separated from each other. Just think of how you control your limbs independently. Similarly, I can control different parts of my body. It's all me. Always."
"Interesting," she said with morbid fascination. "Can you let me see?" She extended her arm in his direction.
"Sure," he agreed and flicked his finger toward her. Immediately, a black tendril extended out of his hand and touched her palm. It grew thicker and formed a deshaped mass that stayed on top of her hand before disconnecting from Alex.
She looked at it with a shine in her eyes and poked her finger at the slime. "Do you feel anything?"
"Quite a few things, actually, you're poking a particularly sensitive spot." Susan's eyes widened as she froze with her finger still jabbing the slime.
"I am…" She said before awkwardly pulling her finger backward from the slime.
"Kidding," Apex laughed. "Your awkwardly embarrassed face is cute. The cells that make up my body are uniform and capable of all the same functions."
"Heh…" She snorted before squeezing the slime in her palm. "So, how do you transform? Like take the form of a human."
"Mimicry. As long as I know enough about the substance or entity, I can turn myself into it," he said, and the ball that Susan was playing with morphed around her hand and formed into a glove.
"Fascinating… I don't feel the presence of a glove at all. It's as if this is my skin." She examined her gloved hand, using her other hand to get a touch and feel of it. "Mind if I turn invisible?"
"You want to see if I can mimic your mutated cells?" He said with a knowing look. "Go for it."
"You can?!" She widened her eyes, immediately turning invisible while focusing on her palm. The hospital gown was left floating in the air, the same with the monitors that were attached to her body, but the glove had disappeared along with her. "This is crazy." She said as she became visible. "How are you doing this?"
"I told you, right? Mimicry. I don't need to understand the complete properties behind something to mimic it, merely its atomic structure and composition. Your mutated cells are complicated, undoubtedly so, but that doesn't prevent me from copying them. Plus, I also have my version of an invisibility ability. But mine's camouflage-based."
"Spontaneously changing color based on the environmental factors?"
"Yes," he nodded. "Unlike mine, which still has a possibility of being seen through by the particularly observant, yours is foolproof."
"It's just invisibility."
"It's far more than that. If that were all, your eyes would have to be visible when you turned invisible. They didn't, yet you didn't go blind." his words made her ponder. "Believe me, there is more to your powers."
"Fine, I'll believe you," she said. "So, why are you here? This…" She raised her gloved hand. "…is cool and all. But you can't just be here to let me play around with a slime. Why am I not dealing with the guys who run this facility? Why is the alleged leader of a federation of multiple planets talking to me? Even if I do have some special power that I don't know about. What does that have to do with this?"
"I'm going to give you the same answer that I gave you before. You are a talent, and I want to invest in you. Ideally, I want you to be my host."
"What? Why?"
"You will have enough time to think over it, no need to worry about being pressured. We will be in close contact for the next month or so. You can gauge me, see if you are interested, and give me your answer then. Also, considering your unique situation, I will also be serving as your nurse."
"Wait, wait, wait. I would prefer a female nurse. I don't mind if she has to use a hazmat suit."
"You don't have to be embarrassed," he said. "A human can't be available to you twenty-four seven. I, on the other hand, can answer your call instantly, no matter the time. This is just one of my bodies, after all. Plus, your nurse would be sharing every single detail with me anyway. We'll have to document everything."
"I would really prefer a female nurse, Apex," she insisted.
"How about this, I'll add Alice to the line, but her availability is going to be a bit dicey. She can be on call for most ten hours a day. You can use this remote to contact her."
"Thank you," she nodded with an appreciative smile that soon turned into a sly one. "So… could you get me something to eat, Nurse Apex? I'm feeling famished. Oh, and where's the restroom?"
"You need to go now?" he asked her.
"Kinda."
"Forget it, you can just get rid of the electrodes and other stuff. I'll come up with a better solution once I come back with your food. As for the restroom…" He walked to the wall opposite the bed and pressed his palm on one of the tiles at waist level. "It requires a biometric scanner and is already keyed to you. Have fun, I'll be off getting you your food. Any preferences?"
"I'm craving Chinese… Preferably takeout fast food. Nothing fancy."
"You have a lot of demands, Susan," Apex said.
"Can you blame me? I'm going to be stuck in a white room for the next month, minimum. If I have the choice, I don't want to eat hospital food. Though, if it's too much of a bother…I'll understand." The sad, lost puppy look that she gave him clarified that she would definitely not understand.
"I'll get you Chinese. Don't try to put those electrodes back on. I have a better solution for them now that you are awake."
"Do we still need so many things? I'm already awake."
"Documenting all inconsistencies in your vitals is important," he said. "There is a chance that something in the air reacts with your powers, or maybe something you eat, or maybe your emotional state. I want us to maintain that information so that I can help you control your powers better."
"I got it."
-x-X-x-
Barely twenty minutes passed by as Apex returned to Susan's room with two large bags of food in his hands. She had been sitting on the bed with a bored expression while looking out through the window when he entered the room. Seeing the bags in his hands, her eyes widened in shock and slight apprehension.
"I know I said famished…but that's a bit much, don't you think?" She said. "Please don't ask me to finish everything."
"Snacks," he said. "If you're going to be quarantined, at least you should get to enjoy some parts of it. I'll get you access to some streaming services as well. But first, we should get you hooked back up to the monitors."
"You said that you had another way to make them work," she said. "It's not a big deal, really. I can just attach the electrodes to myself."
"And I'm telling you that you don't need to deal with these inconveniences." He said before putting the bags down on the ground and sitting beside her on the bed. He grabbed one of the wires, and suddenly, it started turning entirely black as the electrode patch started floating. "See? Easy." With his words, the same thing happened with the rest of the wires as they all turned black.
"Whoa…" She was fascinated by all the floating wires around her.
"Raise your arms slightly. Since the electrodes don't need any manual intervention anymore, I'll change the locations for some of them."
As she nodded, the electrode patches floated closer and attached themselves to her shoulders, forehead, collarbone, back, and then some slipped through the open back of her gown before attaching to her abdomen, thighs, and under her chest.
"Ticklish. But otherwise, I can't feel them now," she commented. "What if I want to take them off?"
"That's the best part, you don't need to. Even if you need to use the restroom, the wires can extend as far as you go. I have a way to make sure that every electric impulse is perfectly preserved. This way, we won't have any discrepancies in our readings."
"Better than being forced to use a bedpan, I guess," she mumbled. "Can we start eating? My stomach is about to start making embarrassing sounds."
"You can start first," he said, handing her a brown paper bag from one of the larger bags. "I need to recalibrate some of these machines."
"I wish we could eat at a table…" She discreetly glanced at him while pretending to look inside the bag. "Earing in bed can get so messy."
"So many demands," Apex sighed. "If it were your nurse, she would've called me up to complain about you by now." He continued calibrating the monitors as per the new positions of the electrodes.
"Well, I recently went through a major breakup. I'm sorry if I'm being moody," she said with an undertone of sarcasm.
"Yeah, you look all broken up about it," Apex said. "Was it a serious relationship?"
"It's complicated…"
"We have time," he said.
"So, he was about to propose to me…when we were in space…overlooking our planet."
"Sounds romantic. You said he was about to. Did he choose to break up with you instead?"
"No, that happened a little while before you came here."
"You're talking about Doom?" He said before snorting. "Good riddance. The guy is a menace."
"What do you mean?"
"You will understand more once you start getting familiar with the multiverse. I don't want to overwhelm you with information just yet," he said. "Though, considering that he was about to propose, you don't seem to mind."
"I was going to refuse anyway. It was less like a relationship and more like a business deal. Something that happened just because. There wasn't any passion…or even understanding involved."
"Sounds like a pain," he nodded.
"How much longer will you take?" she asked.
"Geez, I'm done. No patience." He shook his head and approached the window before creating a table and two chairs on opposite sides. "Here's your table."
"I have to say, Apex. You are amazing. This is so cool. It's like creating something out of nothing. What else can you do?" She got out of bed and sat down on the chair he had created. She wiggled a little, trying to test its structural integrity.
"A lot of things," he said while taking a seat opposite her. "I'll leave my tricks for you to discover later. For now, we should eat."
"Finally!" She practically ripped open the bag and took out the three boxes and the accompanying sauces. "You got orange chicken? Awesome." Within seconds, she had all three containers opened and was pouring the packets of chilli and soy sauce into the chow mein while already eating the orange chicken on the side.
"You really were famished, huh?" He hadn't even opened the first container yet.
She gave him an affirmative grunt with food still in her mouth.
"Try not to choke," he said, and slowly started eating while looking at her. He'd thought that they would talk a little while eating, but the woman didn't stop until she had devoured all three dishes that he'd gotten for her.
"Are you going to eat that?" She pointed to the orange chicken that he hadn't opened yet.
"Be my guest," he nodded. "Oh, by the way, do you want me to supercharge your metabolism?"
"Whaf?" She asked with her cheeks puffed up like a squirrel and multiple pieces of orange chicken stuffed in her mouth.
'God, she has such Wanda energy…' Alex thought.
"Do you want me to supercharge your metabolism? You will be able to break down everything you eat completely, and as a bonus, it will be impossible for you to get fat."
Her eyes widened, and she quickly swallowed her half-eaten food. "I'll be able to eat as much as I want without getting fat?"
"Yes, do you want that?"
"I'd love… wait. Is this a trick to make me agree to bond with you? I need to think about it, Apex."
"Not a formal bond, Susan. Just a rudimentary connection that can be broken at any time. Think of it as a trial. Bonding is a much more complex and semi-permanent process. Once I bond with someone, there will eventually come a point where it will be impossible to break that bond. It will be an eternal connection."
"Sounds serious."
"As I said, that's why I'm offering you a simple perk without any of the obligations. Supercharged metabolism, no strings."
"That sounds amazing…" she said.
"So?"
"What the hell…" She said with an interested smile. "Call it morbid curiosity, but I want to see what the deal is. Lay it on me."
"Look at your hand," he said, making her frown as she raised her hand, which was still covered by his glove.
"I'd completely forgotten that it was even there…"
"It's by design," he said as the glove started disappearing in parts and was completely absorbed into her skin. "A part of me is now flowing in your blood and spreading through your body. I will limit my influence to your gut and related parts and give you a supercharged metabolism. You can eat as much as you want, whatever you want, and it will all be digested completely."
"Even plastic? What about the microplastics in food?"
"Even those. The acid that's being produced in your gut is strong enough to dissolve any material that you know of. The only limitations include some special materials like Uru."
"What's that?"
"The most valuable material in the universe. Also called the rock of creation, and for good reason."
"Seems important…"
"Back to the matter at hand, any questions about the metabolism?"
"Can this acid be produced en masse? It would solve the world's plastic problems."
"Gaia has a better waste processing and management system. Implementing it on scale will take a while, but your planet will also slowly be incorporated into those systems."
"You're so normal… I thought you'd be more like Palpatine."
"Because my Gaia Federation is so much like the Empire, huh?"
"From your words, it sounds a bit closer to the Republic, like just before the Empire was established. You know, with Palpatine in control of everything, but not having ripped away his facade yet. Will you go for Supreme Chancellor or directly skip to become the Galactic Emperor?"
"I'll show you my Palpatine version when we are a bit more familiar. Don't want to scare you off too quickly."
"Ominous," she smiled. "So, when do we start this training you were talking about?"
"Later. First, I want to make this room comfortable. These empty white walls are depressing. And I've barely been in here for an hour."
"I'd rather get out of here quicker," she said.
"Don't try to hurry this. Spending more time training won't help you. If anything, it will frustrate you. We have to take things slow. And making your environment more comfortable is imperative."
"Fine, I guess. I don't have any specific furnishing plans in mind. If you could get me some books, that would be nice. And a microwave…or could I just cook popcorn by repeatedly going between visible and invisible?"
"Can't do microwave. Any electronics. The TV only works because it's behind a radioactivity-blocking glass. And the remotes are made with proprietary tech that can send signals through radioactive environments. That's why you don't have your phone here either."
"I figured… Fine. Eating radioactive stuff won't harm me, right?"
"No," he shook his head. "You'll be fine. Since you don't have any specific furnishing plans, you can get into bed, and I'll create some general stuff that I have in mind."
She nodded before standing up from the chair and getting into bed.
Suddenly, she saw black streaks all across her vision and realized that they were black tentacles that had shot out of Apex's back. Within moments, she saw a bookshelf, a comfortable armchair, and a few more things being created out of nothing.
"And we're done," Apex said. "Let me know if you have any specific books in mind. I'll bring some books that I like tonight in time for dinner."
"We're having dinner together?"
"It's your choice if you want to eat all by yourself, or if you want to eat with me."
"I wouldn't mind some company for dinner."
"Great, then I'll be off." He said. "But first, I want you to spend the rest of the day setting your thoughts straight. Meditate if you want to. Watch something, eat some snacks. If you want anything whatsoever, ask me and I'll get it for you."
"What if I want something flown from another country?"
"If it's reasonable, sure. Just don't send me to get you a fresh baguette from Paris."
"A baguette doesn't sound like a bad idea." Her words made Apex look at her with a flat glare.
"Kidding," she chuckled. "Thank you."
-x-X-x-
As the day passed, Susan spent most of her time watching TV, and when she was bored, she dragged the armchair that Apex had created for her toward the window. Pushing the small table and chairs to the side, she sat at an angle from the window so that she had a view of both the concealed doorway and the view from her window.
"Is that a see-through mirror…" She spoke to herself while looking closely at the wall opposite the window. "Probably is. If this is a military facility, I doubt they would let me stay here unsupervised. Then again…if his words are to be believed, there's a big chance that I actually am in a room in a penthouse and the whole military facility thing is just a lie. I can only ask him when he comes for dinner. At least the view is good."
She put her feet up on the chair and wrapped her arms around her legs, resting her chin on her knees.
"Superpowers, huh…" she mumbled before raising her hand. "Invisible!" Nothing happened with her words. Then, she tried to think about being invisible, but that still didn't work."How did I do it before?" She frowned. "Maybe emotions are the trigger?" She thought of how she had been frustrated and desperate to escape when she had turned invisible the last time. Trying to recall those feelings, she turned invisible again.
"To think this transformation releases enough gamma radiation to match the radioactive waste of a small nuclear reactor… Though that Cobalt-60 analogy was a bit weird." As if thinking of something, she suddenly frowned and became visible again. "I get the couch and stuff being unaffected by my radiation because he made them. The medical equipment also looks like it has a sufficient level of protection against radiation…but what about the bed…" She stood up and pressed down on the mattress. "This feels like simple memory foam...did he create my bed like the other furniture? As harmless as he seems in front of me. I'm pretty sure that he's holding back quite a lot. I have to be on guard against him… It's going to be terribly hard if I have to work with him every day, though."
After some thought, she went back to her chair and wrapped her arms around her legs again.
"I have to ask him about Johnny. I'm sure he's clamouring to meet me," she said. "With his trigger-happy nature, I doubt he's going to wear a hazmat suit. And those flames…"
Hours passed as her thoughts continued jumping from one place to another. Before she realized it, the sun had set, and Apex came into her room once again with a cart that presumably held their dinner.
"Is it too late for me to ask for that baguette from France?"
"How have you survived in this world with that attitude?" Apex asked her with a sigh as he rolled the card over to the window and made the armchair disappear before pulling their small dining table and chairs back to their previous position.
"Oh, that's easy. Beautiful people can get away with almost anything," she said smugly.
"I have found that to be true," he shot back.
"Right," she rolled her eyes. "So what's for dinner? I didn't get to make any demands, so I can only hope that you got something good for us to eat."
"Why are you still in bed?" He asked. "Come on," he said, standing beside her bed and extending his arm toward her. "I'll introduce the food as we start eating."
"Fine," she grabbed his arm and scooted to the edge of the bed before standing in front of him. "Let me go wash up first."
She came back around thirty seconds later, after brushing her hair and washing her face. He stood behind her chair with an inviting gesture.
"Thank you," she said and sat down as he pushed the chair slightly forward. "Is my bed also made of…you?"
He chuckled at her hesitation. "Yes, your bed is also made of me. As are the protections for all of that medical equipment and the TV. The radiation you emit wouldn't let half the stuff in here survive beyond a few seconds."
"Another thing… my nurse said that this was a military facility. Which means one of the walls is see-through from one side. There's no way a military facility would just give me a room without any supervision."
"The thing is, it's easier to make civilians sign NDA's and adhere to them when they believe that their work has something to do with the military," he said. "For all intents and purposes, this room is designed with your privacy in mind. I am the highest authority here, and the only way for someone to monitor you is through those machines. And even that requires a physical interface because of all the radiation issues. There are no cameras here either."
"So I can try to use my powers to try and break free, and no one will come by?" She asked.
"Do you want to break free?" He asked. "Your mere presence could give the people around you radiation poisoning. If you were to use your powers in their presence, they might even die instantly."
"Consider it a hypothetical scenario.
"I will be notified and immediately restrain you," he said. "I have a responsibility to the planets that I have sovereignty over to maintain order and protect their citizens. I will do so by any means necessary."
"Restrain? Not kill?"
"Why are we talking about this? Why don't we simply eat dinner, make small talk, and enjoy each other's company? We will be together for a month at the very least. Can we make it a pleasant experience?"
"Fine… I'm sorry I'm being like this. It's just I was alone all day with nothing to do and my mind kept coming up with all these theories and thoughts…"
"I understand. I'll leave you with enough books to fill a small library. But after we're done eating. I have noticed that ninety percent of human frustration comes from being hungry."
"Yeah… What did you get us for dinner?"
"All that baguette talk gave me an idea," he said, pointing his finger at the table as a white tablecloth was created atop it with plates, cutlery, and two champagne glasses. "We shall start with the champagne—Dom Pérignon." He pulled out the bottle from under the cart and popped it open.
"You are pulling all the stops…" she said. "Though I have to say. I used to date a billionaire. If you want to impress me, don't do it with money."
"I am hurt that you would think that," he said while pouring the champagne into her glass. "Just for that, you're getting a chicken sandwich from McDonald's for breakfast."
"Don't forget the fries and a complimentary hashbrown," she said with a chortle.
"You're lucky you're cute," he said as he put the bottle on the side
"It's a blessing and a curse, really," she said. "God, this is good." After taking a sip, she downed the whole glass. "More, please."
"Try not to get drunk before we reach the main course," he said while refilling her glass. "Next, we have foie gras canapés."
As he took off the lid and picked up the serving plate from the cart, Susan patiently waited for him to place two pieces on her plate and two on his plate before putting the serving plate back down.
"This is a surprise," he said. "I thought you'd be wolfing it all down in no time."
"I like food, sure. But I'm not a glutton. Lunch was different. I was just starving after spending two months in a coma," she said. "These are really good… the best I've ever had. Where are they from?"
"This entire meal has been cooked under my supervision by the White House kitchen."
Susan chuckled. "No, really. Where's it from? I'd love to eat it again."
"I'm serious. When I told you that I'm the highest authority on multiple planets, I meant every word."
"You brought this here all the way from the White House?"
"Something like that," he nodded with a smile.
"Crazy…" she said. "So, how does managing so many planets work for you? Must be pretty stressful."
He chuckled. "The stress that I'm under, you cannot even imagine. Right at this moment, I am juggling work between almost a hundred different bodies on the forty different planets in this cluster. But you don't want to listen to me talk about boring bureaucratic stuff. You want me to tell you why I sent your ex-boyfriend to another planet, don't you?"
"Well…" Susan suddenly looked to the side awkwardly. "The thought may have crossed my mind."
"Try not to maneuver around things that you want to ask me. Just speak up and I'll tell you. I understand that it's hard for you to trust me entirely, but I would appreciate it if you would give me a chance. I really do want to make this work."
"I got it," she nodded. "And while I am curious why my brother hasn't come to meet me yet, and why you sent Victor, Reed, and Ben to another planet, I would rather enjoy this dinner with you and then have this talk. This is truly amazing food, and I don't want to ruin our experience of it by bringing up sensitive topics."
"Hey, so you can be serious sometimes," he teased her.
"Don't even start. What's next? If it's even a fraction of how good the foie gras was, then I will be fulfilled."
"It's going to get better with each step," he said. "Now we have scallops in cream sauce. Or its actual name—Coquilles Saint-Jacques."
"Hm?" She raised her brow as he took off the lids. "I've never eaten this before."
"It's going to be great," he said.
"No more appetizers after this, I hope. I don't think I'll have the space for the main course after all this."
"That is false. Your stomach is equivalent to a bottomless pit."
"…Right. I'd forgotten about that."
-x-X-x-
Once they were done with dinner, Apex explained everything openly to Susan about how he wanted Reed to help create an Infinity Stone detector that would help him locate scattered fragments of each Infinity Stone and more to temporarily satiate her curiosity. Though her consistent barrage of questions led him to a conclusion. Taking things completely naturally would cause things to last weeks or even months. He needed a subtle catalyst that would make Susan more accepting of his presence and susceptible to his influence. And that catalyst came in the form of a very minute manipulation of her hormones. He was going to use his age-old technique of making his hosts horny and susceptible to his actions. But in the case of Susan, this was going to be slow enough that she wouldn't think of it as anything beyond her body naturally desiring release. Unlike his initial shady methods to get hosts, he wanted to start his relationship with Susan on a clean slate.
The next morning, as promised, he brought her a McBreakfast, something she appreciated more than the complex French cuisine dinner that they had on the previous day.
After that, it was finally time to start exploring her powers and showing her the true extent of her capabilities.
"All right, so how does this work?" she asked while seriously looking at Apex, who was sitting comfortably in the armchair, looking at her. "Where do we start?"
"Let us start with what you know how to instinctively do. Invisibility. Do you have any theories about how it works?"
"I think it's my emotions that trigger it," she said. "When I'm frustrated, angry, or desperate."
"Good guess," he nodded. "Try it."
Susan nodded and closed her eyes. A few seconds later, she turned invisible, with the only visible thing being the hospital robe covering her. Both her body and the wires attached to her had disappeared. "You really can mimic the transformation of my cells, huh?" She commented before becoming visible again.
"It shouldn't be a surprise by now," he said. "Did you feel any sort of energy drain after transforming?"
"A little… it didn't last long enough for me to confirm, but I felt a momentary sensation of exhaustion. Why?"
"Because there should be no exhaustion here at all. Your cells are merely reacting with the ambient cosmic energy to transform as per your subconscious desire. You are not using any energy in the process."
"Then what's the issue?" She asked.
"We will have to find that out. But first, let's try the other thing. You can summon an invisible psionic force. Try to push me without moving from your spot."
"You sure? I remember trying to punch that glass before. The cracks were pretty significant."
"They were more to show you your power than the actual response of my defensive system," he said. "Now do it."
"You can never let me have a win, can you?" She asked with an annoyed expression. Raising her arms, she jerked her palms forward. It released a powerful force that made a powerful gust of wind travel through the room. Though the target was still seated on the armchair without a flinch.
"Good work," he said. "As far as natural stuff is concerned, all you have are these two powers. Invisibility and psionic manifestation. We will first master these two. Specifically invisiblity. Or as I prefer to call it, ‹Ambient Cosmic Manipulation› added to your ‹Hyperspace Physique›.
"That sounds like you're using big words just to make things seem more than they are. We used to do this to trick investors all the time."
"You will understand in time. For now, I want you to turn invisible again, try to locate the actual trigger instead of relying on your emotions. Try to understand how your subconscious commands your cells to spontaneously turn invisible. By the end of the day, I want you to be able to turn invisible with a single thought."
"I'll try…" She didn't sound very confident as she turned invisible.
"Again," he said. "I want you to keep repeating it until I can find out what is drawing your energy. That is the most likely reason for all the radiation that your transformation emits."
For the next hour, Susan continued turning invisible and then becoming visible again, only stopping when she was too tired to continue standing and was forced to sit down on the bed.
"Can you…get me…a rubber band?" She huffed tiredly with sweat all over her forehead.
Apex simply flicked his finger, and a thin tendril extended out of his palm. It gathered all of Susan's hair together and formed it into a ponytail.
"Convenient," she said.
"Do you only feel mental exhaustion, or do you feel physically exhausted as well?" He asked.
"My heart is racing…Like I just ran up ten flights of stairs. But there isn't any stress or pain in my legs."
"Okay, one thing that we need to work on is your stamina. The endurance of your cells isn't up to par."
"Hey!" She looked at him with a frown. "I'll have you know, I am very fit."
"Not fit enough if simply using your powers for an hour exhausts you to this extent. I'm adding one hour of high-intensity cardio to your daily plan," he said. "Time to move to the next thing. Exploration."
"Exploring what?" She asked.
"Intangiblity," he said with a smile. "Your cells mutate and perfectly bend light around your body. What is light?"
"A wave."
"What else can be a wave?"
"…Everything."
"Exactly. All particles have the potential to exhibit wave-like behaviour as long as you know what you are doing. As long as you can master the ability, it's possible that you can turn intangible."
"That sounds very powerful…but what can I even do to train in such a way?"
"Learn to control your power as precisely as possible. We will start by trying to bend light at a specific frequency range. Depending on your success in the next hour, we will determine how much time we need to spend every day training it."
Susan gulped apprehensively as the thought of training for over ten hours every day crossed her mind. "Okay…"
"Turn invisible, but this time, try to focus on bending everything except for red light around you. It should be easier to make your ability ignore a smaller range of wavelengths."
She nodded and turned invisible again. For almost ten seconds, she was silently focusing on trying to instruct her ability to act a certain way, but it had no effect. She was still entirely invisible.
"Susan," Apex called. "Come here. Let me help you with it."
When she opened her eyes, she exhaled tiredly. "How are you going to do that?"
"I'll do it manually," he said. "Give me your hand."
She turned visible again and tiredly walked toward him. She extended her arm, and as he held her hand, she took a seat on the arm of the chair, exhaling tiredly.
"Mental exhaustion as well…" Apex commented. "That one's harder to train, but I'll figure out a way for that well."
"Please don't. I'm a scientist. I shouldn't have to train this hard."
"I'll keep your capabilities in mind," he said. "For now, I want you to focus on your body. Almost as if you are meditating. Feel the air on your skin. The feeling of my hand. Try to visualize your heart beating, the blood flowing through your body. Imagine that you have an internal eye that can help you examine your entire body. Observe what your cells are doing and try to take control over that process."
As she gave him an affirmative hum, he took full manual control of her body. Taking advantage of his immense processing capacity, he was now in control of every single cell of her body. At first, he made her cells selectively mutate and turn invisible. Some parts of her body became invisible while others remained unaffected. Going by how her grip tightened on Alex's hand, she noticed the sudden change.
"Do you feel it? How I made specific parts of your body invisible," he asked.
She nodded and looked at her right arm, which was currently invisible, while the hand Apex was holding was still visible. Similarly, her right leg was visible while her left leg was invisible.
"Taking this a step forward, I'll make all other wavelengths except for red pass through," he explained.
As Susan nodded while closely looking at her invisible arm, it turned red. It seemed like it was just illuminated by a localized red light.
"Do you want me to take things further?" He asked her.
"No…" she said more with disbelief than actual refusal. "You can't actually make me intangible…can you?"
Apex just gave her a dangerous smile. "Stand up."
Still in shock, she dumbly followed his words and stood up while still holding his hand.
"Wait!" She suddenly said. "I'll fall through the floor…"
"Every atom has its own frequency, Susan. Since I can selectively make parts of your body invisible, I can also make sure that your intangibility is selective."
"Oh…" She said, almost seeming drunk. While Apex was the one controlling Susan's cells, it was still her subconscious mind that was processing all those changes. She may not have directly felt everything, but her mental energy was still being consumed significantly despite only experiencing what Apex was doing. Of course, he could immediately get rid of both her physical and mental fatigue, but doing that might make her suspicious. He didn't want that.
Suddenly, her hospital gown fell through her body and bunched up at her feet. The only tangible parts of her body were the skin of her feet and her hand that was still holding his.
He got a nice eyeful of this beautiful woman's naked body for almost five seconds before she realized the situation and shrieked before turning invisible. She quickly yanked her arm away from him and stepped back.
"That was a complete accident," he said with a sincere look as he saw her picking up the hospital gown and draping it over her body.
"Yeah, right," she snorted. "I get it, I have a lot of potential. But I'm tired and need a break."
"Understandable. But we are adding two hours of this training to your daily training pool now. We will start with selective invisibility first, then move on to manipulating wavelengths."
"Whatever…" she said before dragging her feet to the bed and pulling the blanket up to her neck, closing her eyes.
"I guess we'll continue after lunch…"
-x-X-x-
Susan woke up almost an hour later to an empty room. She tightly held the blanket up to her chest to make sure that no one was there before calming down. Then, she noticed the note beside her on the bed. Reading it, she understood that Apex would come back in two hours with Lunch, giving her ample time to rest and recover.
"I'm going to kill him…" She said as her embarrassment turned into rage. "To take advantage of me like that. I thought we were training, and he suddenly pulls a move like that. What an asshole."
She spent the next few minutes seething in anger and thinking of ways to mutilate him as her anger slowly cooled down to a slightly mellow level. Then she noticed that the note had something else written on the back.
Sorry about the stunt I pulled. I got you some chocolates as an apology.
She snorted at the words. "As if chocolates are going to make me forgive him," she angrily said, noticing an unmarked box on the table. She threw the note on the ground and got out of bed to check it out. "Are these also White House chocolates?" She mumbled while examining the unmarked state of the box. Inside were individually packaged spheres of chocolate, which made her expression soften slightly.
"Truffles…" she said. "He's lucky that I like these." Unwrapping one of the truffles, she ate it. Unable to help herself, the moment the chocolate hit her tongue, she moaned. Shakily, she grabbed the box and collapsed into the armchair. "God, these are amazing."
As her mind moved away from the anger of her trainer's actions, a different sort of thought emerged in her mind. As she ate the third chocolate, the thought of herself standing naked in front of him flashed again in her mind as a mild heat gathered in her abdomen.
She shook the thought off and continued eating one chocolate after another ravenously. Eventually, more and more such thoughts started emerging as she felt a mild heat in her abdomen.
"Damn… did he lace these with something?" She paused halfway between putting the eighth truffle in her mouth. "No, I'm getting paranoid. If they were laced, then it would've been much more prominent…I guess spending two months in a coma has a way of messing up your hormones."
She tried to shake the random thoughts out of her head, but the image of Apex looking at her naked kept flashing in her mind, keeping her distracted.
"No, I shouldn't…" She spoke to herself with a thoughtful expression. "He could come by in the middle. That would suck. I'll do it tonight instead. I should have plenty of time once he leaves after dinner."
As the minutes passed, she had wiped the entire box of chocolates clean and was back in bed watching TV, getting herself updated with the current affairs of the world, and looking for traces of Apex changing things on her planet. As the hours passed, the inappropriate thoughts and desires intermittently kept coming back to her. Still, it was a manageable level, and she held off until Apex came to the room with their lunch for the day.
"How'd you like the chocolates?" He asked as he entered the room.
Her response was a faint huff as she crossed her arms and turned her head away.
"Going by the mess you made, I think it's safe to assume that you liked them," he said. "Though, please keep your surroundings clean. I would rather not have to handle irradiated foil wrappers and boxes every time we hang out."
She didn't say anything and huffed even more emphatically before turning away.
Apex looked at her with a sigh. Swiping his arm and shooting thin tendrils at the garbage all around, he immediately cleaned up the surroundings and then sat on the bed beside her.
"I'm sorry about what I did before," he said sincerely. "I wanted to play a joke on you. In hindsight, it was distasteful and very rude. I am willing to accept whatever punishment you deem fit."
After a few seconds, she slowly looked back at him with a stern expression on her face.
"I know what you are doing," she said. "And I also know that this bed, the furniture, hell, probably even this crappy robe, is something you made for me. But doing something like that is still not acceptable."
"Crappy robe? I tried to make it as comfortable as possible for you."
"It's a hospital robe, dude. It's open in the back. Every time I walk away from you, I'm conscious about giving you an eyeful of my ass. Calling it crappy is generous."
"Noted. Do you want me to get you something else?"
"Don't divert from the topic. What you did was wrong."
"I understand completely," he nodded. "I will make sure that no such thing happens again. How about we eat now? Food's going to get cold."
"After that stunt you pulled, I am not eating lunch with you," she said. "You get to watch me eat while giving me either a shoulder or a foot massage. Consider that your punishment, Mr. Chancellor."
"That's a better punishment than I'd expected," he chuckled. "Done."
"Just like that?"
"Did you expect me to refuse?" He asked. "Giving a foot rub is barely a real punishment. Why would I say no?"
"I just thought that considering your…stature. You might find it degrading."
"I'm not someone with just impotent authority holding me up, Sue," he said. "My authority and confidence stem from the power that I possess. I didn't inherit it from anyone. Hell, I wasn't even elected. I just took a stand and made things happen."
"Way to ruin my mood. I thought you'd be humiliated and refuse, giving me appropriate grounds to keep things between us strictly professional. And wait… that means you aren't even a real chancellor. You're a fake."
"Gaia was never going to be like the Republic, Susan. I have far too much hands-on control for that."
"Fine, I guess I can at least get a massage out of this hollow victory," she said. "And you can call me Sue. I don't mind."
Apex gave her a smile and walked behind her. "Open the food, start eating, don't worry about me," he said before putting his hands on her shoulders.
Immediately, a comfortable groan escaped her lips, and her eyes closed instinctively. "God…right there." She said as he placed his hands on the sides of her neck and massaged with his thumbs along her spine. "I just want to…lie down."
"Come on, start eating," he said. "I'm only going to do this for twenty minutes tops before moving on to the second part of the massage."
"Yeah, I think…I'm going to wait for you to finish," she said. "This is too good. Oh~ That's the spot."
As a few minutes passed, Susan was barely conscious, with her eyes drooping as if she was about to fall asleep at any time. Since she'd decided to delay eating, he ended up moving to her head and massaged her head as well, making her release increasingly prominent sounds of pleasure and comfort that gave him all the more motivation to keep going.
Soon, twenty minutes had passed, and the woman was melted in her chair, looking like she was nothing more than a limp, boneless suit of skin. He let go of her and stepped away from her to drag the chair on the opposite side of the table to her side.
As he was about to lean over and grab her foot, she held his hand and shook her head. "I'm gonna…take a rain check on that foot massage…"
"I was just about to bring out the massage oils," he said. "As you wish. We can postpone this to dinner instead."
"Maybe…tomorrow," she said with her lips pressed together. "I need to recover after such an…intense experience."
"Sure. Shall we eat?"
"You start...I still need a minute to recover."
He chuckled and opened both sets of containers.
"Get up, we still have some training to do."
"More?" She asked tiredly.
"Yes, more. Don't act surprised. You knew about this. We've only covered your invisibility. The psionics part still remains," he said. "We have to test it to see the extent of your power."
"Would it be fine if I took a little nap first?" She asked. "Whatever you did left my body feeling like jelly…see?" She tried to get a firm grip on her fork, but kept failing.
"You're the one who asked for the massage."
"Just let me rest for a bit before we continue, okay?"
"Fine."
"Where'd you get those chocolates?" She asked him while taking her time.
"Take a guess."
"White House?"
"Not the one on this planet. I have a small cocoa plantation in the White House on Gaia B. That's where the chocolate was produced. I brought them here after you got mad at me."
"You got me chocolates from another planet?" She asked with wide eyes.
"It's not a big deal," he said. "I can teleport things between different bodies."
"You got me chocolates from another planet to try and make up with me, Apex," she said with emphasis. "It most definitely is a big deal."
"As long as it got you to forgive me."
"Oh, no. Don't get me wrong," she raised a shaky finger. "I haven't completely forgiven you with just some chocolates and a massage. You are on thin ice. If you pull something like that again, you can expect hell from me."