For the next hour, Alex pushed Susan to go through three different five-minute circuits two times each. After two repetitions of the first set, her body was moving around floppily as her arms flailed aimlessly. That was when Alex took a full hands-on approach and held Susan through the following circuits, keeping her in place, continuing to fix her posture, and generally making sure that she continued moving and didn't stop. Despite the downright intimate and physical contact, she didn't have any problems with it and was instead comfortably leaning into his arms every time he grabbed her.
By the end of the hour, the woman had no strength left and was splayed across the floor with sweat covering her entire body. She was taking deep, uneven breaths that made her chest rise and fall prominently.
"Come on, get up, you need some light stretching so that you don't get cramps."
"I don't care, you do it. Grope me all you want," she said between huffs. "I think I'm about to die…"
"All right, sit up, we'll do hamstrings first." Alex grabbed one of her arms and made her sit up before forcing her to lean forward with her arms extended above her head. "Legs, keep them straight. Or I'll have to shackle them to the floor."
"Har har," she mocked a laugh before groaning suddenly as Alex pushed her forward. Popping sounds came from her spine as she tried to curl up her legs, only for black strings to emerge from the ground as they wrapped around her ankles and held them in place as her hamstrings were stretched. He repeated it for each leg five times before making her lie on her side. He held her ankle and pulled her foot back toward her hips. "Hold your ankle while I stretch you."
"Ugh…" She groaned as her body was twisted like a bowstring before Alex turned her to her other side and did the same with her other leg.
Ten minutes later, they were done as Alex put Susan's practically boneless body in the reclining couch and had her comfortably half-sitting. She had a lost expression on her face as she looked out the window, seemingly in deep thought.
"So, Sue…I saw something that I thought I should ask you about," Alex said.
"Hm?" She turned to look at him.
"I just checked the reports that I've gotten…"
"Oh no," she mumbled weakly.
"There are irregular spikes in your heart rate that don't match up with any of the physical exertion that I put you through," he said. "Like today morning, between six and six thirty. A longer one last night between eleven and midnight. One in the middle of the day, even between one to one-thirty, when I was out getting us lunch. Susan…" Alex said with emphasis as she put her hands on her face with embarrassment. "…Are you secretly doing even more training to surprise me?"
"…" She had no words and looked at him flatly.
"I'm kidding. I know what you're doing. Your brainwave patterns show dopamine and serotonin spiking right alongside your heart rate," he said. "Feeling lonely every night? And day…and noon apparently."
"Since you know what's going on, then why are you mentioning it and making things awkward?" She said through her teeth without looking into his eyes.
"Well…I was just curious who you were thinking about when you did it," he said. "I've been pretty hands-on with your training, bordering on downright inappropriate for someone who's just a trainer. And going by the perky tips on your sports bra, you seem to enjoy my inappropriate touching well enough. It just made me curious."
"Why are we having this conversation?" She asked before completely turning away from him and hiding her chest from his eyes.
"Curiosity," he said. "It's not like you have any hardcore pornography to watch here—which you can totally ask me to get you—I won't judge. You have to be thinking of someone."
"I am not having this conversation, Apex," she said before standing up and walking to the bathroom. "I'm going to go take a shower."
Alex chuckled and suppressed his urge to tease her about it further.
Once she came out of the shower, she was back to being barefoot with only the breezy hospital gown on. As the two of them got to eating breakfast, she paused in the middle and looked up at him.
Alex raised his brow and looked at her while still chewing his food.
"What?" He asked after swallowing. "Is something wrong?"
"There is…" Susan said with a thoughtful expression on her face. "I'm not sure if I should talk about it, though."
"That's your decision," he said. "I can only tell you that this is a safe space, and no matter what you tell me, nobody in the universe can strong-arm me into snitching on you."
"Encouraging," she said dryly. "It's about the issue we were just talking about."
"About how you have a very major urge to touch yourself all the time?" Alex asked.
"I'm being serious," she said with a frown. "I like sex as much as any woman, but this isn't normal. I just have these urges all the damn time… even now, in the back of my mind, there's a faint image of my hand between my legs as you watch me mockingly. I have these kinds of images in my mind all the damn time. I don't think it's normal…"
"So your hormones are all messed up," he said. "Such a thing is understandable after waking up from a coma that lasted two months. I'm sure being cooped up in a single room also contributes to that issue. Plus, there's the whole superpowers thing going on with you. Your whole body is constantly interacting with the ambient cosmic energy when you aren't using your powers. An abnormal increase in your libido is not too far-fetched."
"I think it's because I'm cooped up in this room… It's been like a whole week since I've breathed any fresh air. At least I get enough sun through this window."
"Do you want to get out of here?" Alex asked her.
"Just for a little bit," she said. "Maybe an hour or two. Is that possible? You said you can move anything between your bodies, right? You could simply teleport me to a place without any people around."
"It's not too difficult an ask. I guess I could pull something together. Give me some time to think about it," he said. "Though I'm curious. You didn't consider that I could be doing something to your food?"
"I won't lie, that was the first thought that came to my mind," she said. "But it's just really unlikely. I mean, why wouldn't you make it a stronger dose and take advantage of me in one go? And you're a multi-planetary dictator. I'm kind of wary of directly accusing you of drugging me. What if you get offended and decide to really start drugging me? No legal means in the world will protect me in that case."
"Yeah, you're exactly the kind of person who would gladly bow down to an authority figure and violate your principles," Alex said dryly. "Tell me what you really want to say."
"You really want to hear? Fine," she shrugged. "Considering the most far-fetched scenario, I'll assume that you've been planning to go after me for a while. You send my ex, whom I still have complicated feelings toward, and my current boyfriend, as far away as possible. Then you isolate me from any human contact under the guise of some radiation that I'm supposedly releasing, which is questionable at best. And finally, you drug me so that I'm horny all the time and eventually jump your bones. To scheme to such a deep level to ensure that I accept that bond or whatever is only something that someone unprecedentedly insecure would do. Only someone who has practically no self-confidence would go to such lengths to achieve the same result as a few dinner and movie dates. But, of course, those are all meaningless and far-fetched theories. Right?"
Alex was left frozen in place by the time Susan stopped speaking.
"Right, Apex?" Susan asked as she stopped eating completely and crossed her arms. "We have chemistry, I think you've seen and felt that first-hand. You aren't the kind of insecure person who would do things like that, right? With the power and authority you hold, there shouldn't be any reason for you to be this insecure about courting a woman."
Alex sighed and dropped the fork on the plate before leaning back. "What gave it away?" He asked her.
"The absurdity of it all," she said. "If my powers were releasing deathly radiation all over my surroundings, things would be very different. I wake up in what is practically another reality, and the people I know are all unimaginably far away…well, except for Johnny, but he barely has the time to call, which I need to be in your presence to do. The small things add up, Alex. The first few days were understandable, but I just kept feeling horny all the damn time. No matter how many orgasms I brought myself to, it was never enough. And when I asked you to get me out of here, you just agreed, without much thought. One has to start to get suspicious of things at some point."
Alex sighed again and ran his hands through his hair. "I won't gaslight you and disagree. You are right. I'm insecure, possessive, controlling, and quite a lot more. I have this compulsive need to be watching over my hosts twenty-four seven…even though that's more of a bond thing than a surveillance thing. I do that whole princess treatment and mix it with addictingly great sex to slowly get them dependent on me so that eventually I am the only important thing in their lives."
"Why are you getting up?" Susan asked him as he stood up, fixing his clothes.
"That's why you confronted me, right?" Alex asked. "To get this whole farce over with? It's done. I'm not going to force you to be with me. You're free to walk out the door with me. No electric shock will stop you this time."
"Just like that? You gave up just like that?" Susan asked as she stood up and walked in front of him. "Sit back down."
"Okay," he said with a raised brow, and sat back down as he looked up at her.
"I confronted you about it all because I want the farce to end, yes. But only the farce part of it," she said with a nod. "Not the rest of it. We can still train together, eat meals together, and more. You see…" She smiled and plopped herself down on his lap before wrapping an arm around his neck and bringing her face close to his. "… Your scheming doesn't change the fact that I have had an amazing time with you. You listen, you pamper, and if your words are anything to go by, you can show a woman a mind-blowing time. Plus, I have this little issue with me. I see something broken and can't help but want to fix it. And you, mister insecure, possessive, controlling, and quite a lot more, seem like you are all sorts of broken."
"Trying to fix me might leave you an entirely different person than you are today," Alex wrapped his arm around her back and held her waist.
"That's what happens over time. People change. I'm not the same person I was five years ago. And I won't be the same person I am in five years. What I want to make sure is that you change for the better in the next five or ten or whatever years."
"I'm not going to stop conquering planets. That's going to involve a lot of killing and downright genocidal actions," he said. "Consider this your disclaimer. Since we're being open and all."
"And we'll tackle that when the time comes," she said with a smile. "For now, I'll need you to get me an apartment of my own. I'm pretty sure that after two months, I've been evicted."
"I have a great place in mind," Alex said.
-x-X-x-
"So, I just walk out?" Susan said as she walked behind Alex.
"Yeah, you can take Victor's apartment. I'll have someone tear down this fake containment room tomorrow," Alex said.
"By someone, you mean you," she said. "Don't you, Apex?"
"It's Alex," he said. "Apex is a sort of screen name for my dictatorial duties. Goes well with the crowds."
"Alex, huh?" She said. "Sounds…normal."
"Come on," Alex stepped in front of the wall, and it opened up to reveal a doorway that he stepped through.
"You sure I won't get zapped?" She asked.
"I'm the one doing the zapping. So yes, you won't be zapped," he said, stepping out of the room.
Susan hesitated while looking at the exit in front of her. She raised her foot and brought it forward before suddenly jerking it back.
"Oh, just come on," Alex grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the room. "There, happy? You can do whatever you want from now on."
"Yeah, how about we go back and finish breakfast first?" She said.
"It was all a farce, Sue," Alex said gently. "You don't have to be worried about emitting gamma particles all around you and killing everyone. I lied. So instead of eating breakfast in that tiny ass room on that tiny ass table, we'll eat on the dining table. And we'll train in the large gym downstairs. And you can go on a walk outside when you take a break instead of being cooped up all alone with nothing to do."
"Okay," she nodded with slight hesitation as Alex led her to the living room. "Since it was all a farce…do I need to keep these wires on me from now on?" She asked, raising a wire that was coming out of the back of her hospital gown. "They may be extremely convenient to the traditional stuff, but they are still things tethering me."
"The part about radiation was a lie, not the part about you gaining superpowers from a cosmic cloud. I need to keep monitoring your vitals at all times. But if you are annoyed by the wires and machines, there is a solution. I'm just not sure whether you will agree to it or not."
"What is it?"
"You can keep a part of me with you at all times. It can take any simple form, like a bracelet, or anklet, or a choker, whichever one you prefer. It will stay on you at all times and allow me to keep monitoring your entire body live. Plus, it will have an extra function of becoming whatever clothing item you want it to become."
"So if I wear it, you'll know immediately whenever there is something irregular with my vitals. Like, say, a spike in my heart rate."
"Yes," he nodded. "But you don't need to worry about it. I won't mess with your hormones anymore. Now, whatever you do, it will be done by your own will."
"That sounds…Good, I think. But what's this about forming whatever clothes I want?" She asked. "Do I have to ask you to make me a sundress?"
"It's better if I show you," Alex said, handing her a plain black cloth. "Just wrap it wherever you want. Neck, ankle, wrist…thigh? I guess. It will clasp automatically and refit itself snugly, such that it doesn't even feel like it's there. Also, you won't be able to move it around if you decide to agree after this. At least not without asking me. You can't move its default form from one spot to another randomly."
"A bit long for my wrist or ankle. And a bit short for my thigh…" she said with narrowed eyes before putting it around her neck. "Heh, this reminds me of the time that I went full goth for two whole years in school. I'd dyed my hair black, started wearing edgy clothes, got one of those nose rings that just clasp on the side of the nostril and don't require actual piercings. I used to have just a chain around my neck for a brief period of that."
"Now that is an image that you merely need to say the word for. I will make sure you find yourself in that exact outfit in an instant," Alex chuckled amusedly. "Goth Sue sounds hot as all hell. I kind of imagined you to be a sweet girl-next-door kind of woman. It surprises me that you didn't go for the bracelet option."
"Normally, yes, that's what I would choose… but this situation is as far from normal as it can get," she said. "Wearing a choker is kinda representative of the absurdity of the situation."
"Well, it looks nice on you. Freely tell me if you ever want to go full goth and rebel against your parents by having sex with an alien," he said as the wires that were all attached to her snapped away from her body, disconnecting her from the machines. "As for the clothes thing that I was talking about…" He snapped his fingers. "Look down."
The choker on her neck started expanding and covered her entire body within seconds. Soon, it morphed into a red dress that left her shoulders bare and hugged her perfect figure. Merely training for a week with Alex's bonuses had given her such a perfectly sculpted body that pretty much no normal woman could even hope to achieve naturally. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ novel·fiɾe·net
"Oh, nice sundress," she said while observing her new clothes. "I love the lace situation it has going on at the bottom. Can you turn it into anything?"
"As long as I have the image, sure. Even when I'm not here, you just need to speak out loud and describe what you want. Though it would be easier if you had some kind of visual example to show me."
"So you'll be hearing everything I hear and say?"
"Just pretend the choker has a voice assist kind of thing going. It's not me, it's the choker."
"Yeah, my privacy be damned," she said. "Fine. Whatever. It's not like I had any privacy in that damn room. All that furniture that you made with your body… You could hear me through that as well, couldn't you?"
"You're really smart," Alex said with a smile. "You should be a scientist."
"Don't patronize me," she said. "Since you already know and hear everything, I might as well get some convenience in my life from all that."
Alex chuckled and sat down at the dining table while Susan sat down opposite him to continue their breakfast.
"Hey… do you know about…" Susan suddenly thought of something before starting. "What I was…using."
"Oh yeah. I know all about your secret books and their contents," Alex nodded. "If you want, you can get the choker to modify itself to look like an actual slave collar. If you don't remember, I consider submission very hot."
"You have to make it weird, don't you?" She sighed. "It doesn't matter. If you would recall what I told you after that… It's fun to fantasize about that stuff, but in reality, it's just not feasible long term."
"I mean, I can sustain you for as long as you need, including making sure that your body and mind aren't overwhelmed. I think long-term or even permanent bondage is downright feasible for someone I'm taking care of."
"…I was talking about the general relationship, Alex," she said dryly.
"Oh…" He looked down and focused on his food.
"Will we change any of our trainings, or will it all stay the same?" Susan asked.
"It's going to stay the same. But since we can use the large gym downstairs instead of the cramped room, I'll add in some movement-intensive exercises. You can rest for half an hour once we finish food, then we'll go down and get your spectrum-based invisibility going. By the end of the week, you should at least be able to switch between any spectrum of wavelength of visible light."
"I'll be a walking and talking club at that point," she said with a mock dreamy look. "I've always wanted to bring the club wherever I go."
"In your further training, we'll move beyond the visible spectrum so that you can eventually become invisible to every single means of detection."
"Except for sounds," she said. "My movements still make sounds."
"Do you want me to make you intangible again to make a point?" Alex asked. "It's been a while since I saw you fully naked."
"You're probably already sensing my naked body," she mumbled under her breath.
"And do you want me to share my observations regarding your knowledge of that fact?" Alex asked her with a glint in his eyes that made her shiver.
"No…" She changed the topic. "Intangibility. Sounds like a plan. Are we going to be doing that for two hours?"
"Yes. Then we get lunch, followed by thirty minutes of rest and a thirty-minute simple cardio circuit."
"More cardio? Didn't you push me enough this morning?"
"That was for a different purpose; the one after lunch will be for a different purpose," he said. "It will get your body ready for the physical pressure that you face when working with your force fields. After two hours of that, we'll hang out for a while.
"Are we skipping strength training?" She said excitedly.
"That comes after an hour of rest while we are hanging out," he said. "Strength training is just as important. Then dinner, and you can do your usual nightly routine and go to sleep."
"Bite me," she snapped at him angrily.
"Hey, I've seen what you like to read," he said. "I'm pretty sure that if I take it seriously, you'll enjoy it."
Susan gave him a warning look before focusing on her food, attacking it as if taking her anger out on the sunny-side-up eggs.
Soon, they were done, and Susan decided to go out on a walk by herself to clear her head.
-x-X-x-
As Alex went through a number of hoops to manage the curveballs that Susan would occasionally throw in his plans, things on Earth-Z were moving smoothly. The Widows were gearing up for a battle of a lifetime against one of the prime bastions of humanity. At the same time, Laura was on Farm Earth, spending her time resting with Alex while also experiencing a special kind of therapy with her favorite therapist, who also liked to cosplay as a cat—in a more literal sense than one would imagine. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ novel[f]ire.net
Felicia was currently on all fours, still encased from neck to toe in black latex that had practically become her permanent second skin. Her limbs were folded up on the carpet as Alex sat beside her, running his hand along her spine. Across from them, Laura was on her back with her head resting on her arm.
"I'm just unsure, you know?" Laura said. "I don't even know what to say to them? It's really hard for me to imagine them knowing where I was yet never making any attempts to save me. The logical thing to think is that they were all just wiped out when everyone mutated into those abominations. But Alex keeps telling me that the mutants are still there in a different bastion in South America. I believe him, but it's hard to really be convinced until you see it for yourself, you know?"
Felicia cutely meowed at her before walking forward and licking Laura's cheek. She then moved back to Alex and put her head on his thigh, meowing at him. He gave her a smile and put his fingers in her platinum hair, combing through it gently.
"What do you think, Alex?" Laura asked as she sat up and scooted closer to the two of them and placing her head on Alex's thigh beside Felicia's. "Am I stupid for having all these feelings? I'm not even sure how to articulate them."
"You're not stupid," he said. "You're about to take revenge on the maniac who kept you caged up like an animal for half a decade and extracted your bone marrow. Getting jitters is understandable."
"That's not the reason for my hesitation…" Felicia shifted places and moved to Laura, lightly licking her face and neck as she giggled and rubbed the kitty's hair and back. "I'm down to kill that bastard Stark tomorrow and rip away everything and everyone he cares about. What's causing me to feel nervous is the thing that comes afterward. What am I even supposed to say to the X-Men? Hey, Dad, I'm alive. I know it's been a while, but I hope you remember me. The daughter-clone of you, whom you abandoned years ago to a life of permanent misery and torture. Seriously, Fel, how in the world is your hair so soft? We both get the regular Apex treatment…"
Laura suddenly changed the topic as she ran her hands through Felicia's hair. The platinum blonde responded with a pleased purr and licked Laura's face again before moving closer to Alex and meowing at him with a greedy look in her eyes. He raised his hand as she brought her head closer to his palm, letting him caress her hair for a bit before it moved further to her back, tightly squeezing her ass. He firmly gripped her waist and made her lie down on her side.
"That's my good kitty," he said with a cooing voice, and put his hand on her belly.
Laura looked at Felicia happily mewling at Alex as he gave her a belly rub with an occasional boob rub with fascination in her eyes.
"You know, looking at Felicia enjoying petplay so freely almost makes me envious."
"Does that mean…" Alex looked at Laura with wide, excited eyes.
"No." Laura crushed his hopes and dreams with one word. "We did it once, and it was fun. But that's all. What I meant is that I could never do what Felicia does. Be so carefree and uncaring, letting you play with me and tease me like a pet. After a while, I'd just want to jump on your cock and get out of the restraints. But she enjoys it…almost to the point of embodying it. That's what I'm envious about. She isn't turned on by the thrill of being helpless and entirely at your mercy…well, maybe a little. But primarily, she just enjoys pretending to be your cat."
"We could always put you in a bitchsuit again," Alex said. "I think you could learn to embody a cute puppy just like her."
"I just told you, Alex," she said. "What I enjoyed that time was the thrill of being entirely at your mercy. I didn't care for acting like a dog. To me, a bitchsuit is simply another kind of restraint, albeit a bit more embarrassing than the usual stuff. It doesn't suddenly awaken a different side of me like it does for Felicia."
The platinum blonde simply purred louder as she got on her back and gave Alex full freedom to do whatever he wanted. He rewarded her by moving his hand between her legs and rubbing her over the latex skin that covered her crotch.
"Let's move back to your issues," he said. "Do you not want to confront them just yet? We could simply wipe out the Bastion, and you can help get rid of the continental ‹Eldritch Class› abomination so the Widows can lead the Prime Bastion to establish a safe haven for all humans on the continent."
"And let you treat the people in your so-called Bastions like literal fucking cattle to bolster the numbers of the abominations? If anyone realizes the dark shit that you are planning, Alex… I'm not on board with this idea. It's beyond genocidal maniac and is well into the pointlessly insane territory."
"Look, I need an external threat to rapidly force every country to kneel before me and accept my empire as a prime authority that governs them," he said. "If you have a better idea than mass producing abominations, then I'm all ears."
"Clones," she said. "Just use your clones to pretend to be big, bad aliens that want to invade Gaia. People will eat it all up."
"Yeah, it's both a lot of work and unsustainable," he said. "I don't want to divert so much of my attention to such a needless task."
"Then just clone humans and turn them into abominations," she said. "There has to be a better way than to rear actual humans like cattle to eventually turn them into mindless zombies that you use to invade other planets."
"If you are that against it, I could make it so that the Prime Bastions are all working on accelerated time. Like to an extreme degree—imagine twenty years to one day. The abominations will attack them every forty years, i.e., two days, and breach the walls, causing the citizens to be exposed to the outside air. It won't be enough to hurt the young, but the elderly will all have an adverse reaction to it, and ultimately get converted into abominations before they can drive away the creatures."
"That's still rearing those people like cattle… It's like you don't give a damn about free will…"
Suddenly, Felicia's loud mewl captured Laura's attention as the platinum blonde woman's entire body shook and convulsed violently. She swayed her hips as if humping Alex's hand that still rubbed her pussy over the latex while her body kept jerking. It kept going for almost two minutes before Felicia's body finally calmed down, and she meowed at Alex with a fulfilled and at-peace expression. Her eyes naturally closed as she put her head on his thigh, and she went to sleep. Alex gently shifted her position to make sure that she slept comfortably without freeing her from the restraints and finally turned back to Laura.
"Where were we? Yes. Of course, I don't care about free will, Laura. Don't you know me?" Alex looked like Laura had said something absurd. "Those people get to live happy, enjoyable lives with all the resources and the desires that they may have. The only caveat is that every forty years, a deadly invasion-type event kills everyone over sixty. Now, I just need to think of something that will slow down their evolution and make sure that even after a thousand time-accelerated years, they are the same humans as the humans of today. I don't want to suddenly have them popping up with newer versions of mutants or something like that. Who knows if they develop a natural immunity to being turned into abominations?"
"I feel like it would have been better if I didn't know about this. At least it wouldn't have been on my conscience then," she said. "How do you even plan to get people converted to abominations? Those transformations were a one-time thing during the initial blasts. It's not like a zombie virus. If someone dies by an abomination, they just die. And if they are exposed to the air, they simply get their skin melted off."
"Once we kill the continental abomination, I will most likely create a nest for them where I will make the necessary modifications to their biology and take implicit control over them as well," he said, much to Laura's disbelief. "After all, I don't want to have them actually kill all the humans. Repopulating the Prime Bastions from too low numbers would be a bitch and slow down progress significantly."
"You're killing me, man… I think it would be better if I just stopped asking you about this stuff entirely. I can't keep hearing about you doing such things and keep myself sane. Could you purge the memory of you ever telling me about these plans of yours?"
"No," he said. "I don't do that for my hosts. Eventually, when I do even worse stuff, you'll consider this downright saintly. I promise."
"That doesn't help!" Laura groaned at Alex and stood up before storming out of the room.
"We never finished our conversation about your issues regarding the X-Men and Wolverine…" Alex shouted behind her, but she pretended not to hear, making him chuckle as he gently ran his fingers through Felicia's hair. "Your hair really is unbelievably soft, isn't it?"
-x-X-x-
The towering walls of Tony Stark's Bastion stood firm and unbroken in the middle of the endless wasteland. There were no structures around beyond some bunkers and concrete rubble that couldn't stand the test of nuclear weapons. Inside the walls that held off the deadly, toxic air of the wasteland were multiple layers where the citizens resided. The outermost area constituted the slums and held a modest two to three hundred thousand people. These people barely had the basic necessities and were essentially the cannon fodder that would hold off the abominations in case there was ever a breach of the walls. Another, slightly smaller wall kept them separated from the main area of the Bastion. Speaking of which, the main city was an entirely different beast compared to the slums that barely held stable houses for the people. The main city had a solid population of over a million people and was the prime definition of a cyberpunk society, with everything governed by JARVIS.
Unlike Alex's Prime Bastion, this place held a fully functioning society with multiple schools, universities, hospitals, and the like. People held actual jobs here, like running coffee shops, working in fast food, and even more demanding jobs, like working in factories or building unique creations to combat the monsters outside remotely. Of course, it had the advantage of time on its side. The Prime Bastion had barely existed for a single year, while Tony Stark's Bastion had been established for almost a decade now. It had been created when the nuclear wars had just started, so it was able to pull in all sorts of able people who could contribute to the development of the city and recreate the elements of a functioning society, like schools, hospitals, universities, and more. Such development was especially focused on preserving the knowledge of the human race. When the aliens called the Kree invaded their planet, the Bastion stood strong as one of the most powerful resistance forces against them. It held strong against their countless assaults all the way until their planet itself was transported into another reality.
At the center of this teeming city of war was the symbol of its stability and power that it possessed. A massive tower that went all the way up into the sky with no end in sight. The existence of that tower represented something important for the people of the bastion. It represented a future. It represented something beyond just the mundanity of their regular life, trapped in a single place for their entire lives as they ended. The tower was a space elevator that played a massive role in the war against the Kree. It was responsible for dealing them some of the most impactful blows against the invading forces. On this day, almost a decade after the establishment of the Bastion, this symbol of its power and stability was broken. Newest update provided by n0velfire.net
The sky crackled ominously as the generally yellow clouds, which were the result of all the nuclear and biological weapons deployed by the humans and Kree, showed hints of blue within them. The sound of the occasional thunder made the citizens look up, anticipating a particularly violent acid rain. Yet the deadly water never came. The sounds of thunder intensified as the blues in the clouds became more and more prominent in the eyes of the citizens. The ominous nature of the situation made them all instinctively move to take shelter despite the Bastion-wide shielding barrier that kept any outside elements from affecting them. At this time, some of them noticed something even more ominous. The tower in the center of the bastion was slowly turning pitch black. The space elevator may have been depowered and unusable for now, but it still served as a symbol for the people. Today, that symbol was losing its luster and slowly turning pitch-black.
They all made enquiries to the city's central AI about what was going on, but all they got was silence. The thunder got louder, and the sky started turning darker. The city's defences seemed to be completely down and unable to do anything about the spreading darkness that covered the space elevator. As the minutes passed, the sounds of thunder got too loud for the people to bear, forcing them to get into buildings, and even then, they had to clasp their hands over their ears to endure the loud sounds.
Soon, all of that thunder struck down. Hundreds of thick lightning bolts struck the base of the space elevator, being blocked by a blood-red shield that held it off. The lightning continued its assault on the rest of the tower as the deafening sounds finally reached the citizens, making almost all of them scream out loud in pain. Soon, the darkness reached the blood-red shield at the base and was blocked, similar to the lightning. At that time, a lightning bolt as thick as the tower itself struck the exposed part. Instantly, all of the lightning stopped, and the only sound was the cracking of the tower as it broke and started to fall down.
Before panic could ensue among the citizens, the tower started disappearing in parts and within a few seconds was nowhere to be seen, leaving nothing but a blood-red shield at its base.
Just as it seemed that the dust was about to settle, a powerful earthquake assaulted the entire city, which shook everything and had the citizens reeling in shock after they dealt with the unbearably loud thunder. It was at this point that ninety widows silently appeared in various parts of the city and started moving toward the more crowded areas. They had a certain compelling aura that made their words undeniable to the panicked citizens. Despite the women being entirely unfamiliar to them and wearing what seemed like the garments of assassins, they all followed their directions of the women without question.
One of them, with blonde hair coming out of the back of her head in a ponytail, and especially prominent five-lined glowing red stripes over her outfit, was acting as the leader. They were all communicating with each other through intercoms and worked with such meticulous coordination that they were able to take full advantage of the temporary compelling aura that they had. With their natural capabilities, they were quickly able to set up a functioning system that methodically moved the citizens underground through multiple exit points. It seemed that, magically, parts of the area under the Bastion had been hollowed out and formed into escape tunnels that led all of the citizens away from the Bastion. As they reached below, they found more people waiting for them, who guided them further. The assassin women who guided them stayed on the surface, continuing the evacuation efforts. Clearing the almost one and a half million population of the Bastion was going to take a while, and they had to be hands-on with the evacuation if they wanted to make sure that everything kept moving smoothly.
On the other hand, the source of the Earthquake and constant tremors that shook the entire bastion came in the form of a terrifying creature outside the walls. A nine-foot-tall, sleek, feminine figure with red and blue streaks glowing all over her body stood. Four tentacles extended out from her back and stabbed into the wall, holding her in place as she took a few steps backward with some difficulty as the tentacles tried to pull her toward the wall. Her head was only partially exposed, such that her brunette hair flowed freely, but her face was covered by a black mask. She pulled herself against the tentacles' pull and raised her arm as if about to punch forward. With a throaty growl, her feet left the ground, and she flew forward, punching the wall with all her strength.
A cloud of dust erupted from the force of her punch as the ground shook violently, spreading its tremors all around and shaking the entire city's foundation. Yet, as the dust settled, the wall was still just as solid as it had been before, without a single crack.
The sleek figure attempted to punch and break the wall a few more times, but it was useless and only resulted in even more tremors that made the evacuation efforts of the ninety or so women more difficult.
After a while, the figure released an audible huff and raised her arms in defeat.
"Fine, I can't destroy it myself. I need you to help me," she said.
[These walls held off an invasion by the Kree. If your basic Low Cosmic strength was enough to break them, the humans inside wouldn't have stood a chance. These walls have tens of different elements mixed into a sustainable and nigh-unbreakable alloy. It includes all sorts of rare earth metals and extra-terrestrial metals like Vibranium and Adamantium that connect the wall all the way down to the continent's tectonic plates.]
"If you are done sucking the wall's dick, can we get to it? I'm getting impatient."
[Punch again.] The tentacles detached themselves from the walls as Laura stepped back before charging toward the wall.
She shouted loudly before her claw instinctively extended outward. She planted her foot right in front of the wall before punching forward.
The force of the punch caused the entire continent to shake as tsunamis rose up in both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. A massive cloud of dust rose up from her position as a chunk of the wall broke entirely and shot forward, decimating a significant part of the slums. It would have killed thousands of people, but this was the first area that was evacuated by the Widows.
-x-X-x-
Once Laura broke through the walls, she didn't hold back and rammed through every structure that she came across. Unlike before, where she was merely using her own strength, this time, she was acting with the full eight times base amplification of the level six organ bond that she had with Alex. It pushed her firmly into the territory of a Cosmic Physique, allowing her to break through almost everything in her feral charge toward the blood red dome that protected the command center.
Within seconds, she reached her destination and leaped up before punching it with her claws extended. It was as if her claws had struck unbreakable metal and made her entire bone structure shake. Considering the force with which she was moving, without Alex being bonded to her bones, her claws would have snapped by now.
[I think we might need to upgrade your claws. At my current strength scale, Vibranium and Adamantium might not be able to keep up.]
Laura grunted and punched again as Alex forcefully retracted her claws. Her punches held enough power to crack the crust of the earth in half, yet they were merely deforming the crimson dome as it held steady.
After a few seconds, she finally paused after coming to her senses.
"What do we do about this?" She asked. "We've already blocked his main exit route. What if he continues to hole himself in there?"
"Allow me. When brute force doesn't work, what I like to do is to make it so that the barrier doesn't exist in the first place," Alex said, appearing beside Laura and putting his palm on the barrier.
Immediately, he released an obscene amount of Chaos Energy and cast a spell to dispel the barrier.
"Whoa…" Laura could tangibly feel the waves of Chaos energy radiating from Alex and pressurizing her. "Couldn't you channel that through me? Why the need to create a separate body?"
"It's complicated," he said. "Unlike before, where I was essentially taking Wanda's remnant energy for myself, now, I am pulling it through a sort of official channel. The Chaos energy that I can tap into by myself is both greater and more controlled than if I do it through one of my hosts. This Chaos energy now has my signature on it, and if it is released by anyone other than me, it won't have as good an effect. Naturally, it's still possible for me to cast Chaos magic through you, but it's just not as efficient."
By their time he finished speaking, the blood red dome fizzled out of existence as parts of it started disintegrating, only for the whole thing to disappear in a few more seconds.
"Let's go," he said. "Last time we were here, I was sneaking around when I tried to enter."
"And then you lied to me and told me that you were also stuck in here," Laura said with a reminiscing expression. "Going from that to telling me the truth about treating people here as cattle. You've come far. No longer a pathological liar and just a genocidal maniac for the time being."
"I'd like to think so," he said. Just as they broke through the fencing, a barrage of bullets shot at both him and Laura in her Apex form. Naturally, none of their weapons could do anything to either Alex or Laura. Their bullets simply bounced off their bodies as if impacting an impenetrable wall. All the energy weapons and the explosives did was create more dust and shrapnel all around, without actually hurting either of them.
They shared a look and decided to simply ignore the attackers entirely and continue forward. Even though, unlike the general civilians, these were all skilled mercenaries who both protected the Bastion from outside threats and maintained the peace within by quelling any rebellious elements in their society. Still, they were simply following orders. Of course, Alex couldn't care less about the moral quandary that was posed here. What he cared about was the fact that these people were genetically enhanced, which meant that they and their spawn would be prime candidates to transform into stronger variants of Abominations. Instead of killing them, Alex and Laura calmly walked through their volley of gunfire. As they passed the guards, the tentacles extending out of Laura's back simply stabbed them into unconsciousness. Just as each of them would fall to the ground, a feminine silhouette would momentarily appear beside them and pick them up before disappearing again. By the time Laura reached the main entrance to the tower, the widows had cleared out all of the guards in the vicinity.
"Would you like to do the honors?" She asked.
"As if you can get this door to open by yourself," Alex retorted at her before placing his palm on the control panel.
"Can you hack into things?" Laura asked.
"Remember when we were here last time?" Alex asked. "I delayed our escape by two minutes to hack into their systems and locate the Extremis formula."
"I suppose," she said. "I don't really remember. It's been a long time since then."
"I have the ability to directly interface with electronics," he said before frowning and looking at the control panel. "You know I can read minds and pretty much take control of someone's brain and nervous system? I do that by interfacing with the synapses of the nerve cells and controlling the electrical impulses. A similar principle can apply to technology."
"So calling you an Apex biological life-form is a lie," she said. "You are even more than that… What's wrong?" She asked as Alex showed a look of effort when trying to hack the door into opening.
"The resistance being put up is a bit more than I expected. I don't think even churning abomination meat into generating raw electricity can achieve the kind of power to run such a strong AI…It seems like Tony's AI is much more capable than I'd expected."
"Can we take it?" Laura asked.
"Of course," Alex said. "And done, see?"
A second later, the door opened as Alex and Laura entered the facility. Unlike what they encountered outside, here, they were greeted by a legion of robots that immediately started blasting at them with all sorts of different attacks. Sonic attacks, energy attacks, projectiles, and more. In another life, Alex might have been immediately killed by the sound-based attacks of the robots.
[You know, funnily enough. It was this place that helped me get immune to heat and sound.]
Alex said with amusement in Laura's head as he stood back while Laura jumped into the thick of it and started destroying the robots ceaselessly. The tentacles on her back all acted individually to take on multiple robots a second while she used her claws to swipe through most of them and slice the metallic bodies as if they were made of paper. Amidst her rampage, Alex also did some cleanup duty and collected all of the scrap robots that were on the ground. Despite the ease with which they took care of them, the automated robots were far beyond what Tony Stark of the MCU Earth had ever created. They could be used as references if he ever decided to make something like that for his empire. The source of this content ɪs N0v3l.Fiɾe.net
The robots kept endlessly pouring out at the same pace as Laura killed them. Unfortunately, there was a serious resource deficit in the wasteland, and Alex was making sure to keep collecting every single destroyed part of the robots, preventing the automated system from repairing them on the go. Ultimately, after almost half an hour, in which they destroyed tens of thousands of robots, the facility seemed to be out. However, it wasn't long before the big guns came along. Large armors that seemed like smaller versions of the Hulkbuster came in to stop Laura and Alex's rampage. Each of them had a Sentinel label over their chests.
"Hey, I remember these," Alex said. "I think they got upgraded after last time. Think you can take them? They are made of the same Adamantium-Vibranium alloy as your bones."
"Let me try first…" Laura took up a fighting stance as five identical Sentinels came to kill her. "Going straight for the kill, I see. Last time, these things wanted to subdue me and bring me back to be their damn healing panacea."
Her body crackled with lightning as her speed shot up, leaving a blue trail in her path as she appeared in front of one of the Sentinels and slashed her claw at its joint while it crackled with blue lightning. Her claw was only able to cut halfway into its weak spot before her tentacles pulled her back from its swiping arm. Laura continued attacking that specific spot of that specific Sentinel until she was finally able to lop off its arm without depending on Alex. Of course, dependency here meant something completely different. She didn't count the tentacles coming out of her back, even though they were the entire reason she didn't keep getting whacked around by the five highly coordinated robots that were able to appropriately respond to her attacks despite the speed at which she moved.
"You've got to be kidding me…" Laura mumbled as she saw the arm she'd just lopped off break apart into multiple nanites and fly back to its robot, returning it to its original state.
"I'm taking over, Laura. I want the tech behind those nanites," he said. "It will be a complete game changer for Gaia's technological advancement."
"Go for it, I can't do anything about these things. As long as you let me stab Tony Stark multiple times, I'm fine," she said with an exhausted sigh.
Immediately, a wave of Chaos energy erupted from Alex as he cast a spell that immobilized the robots in place. He quickly shot five blobs of his body at each of them to break them down and absorb them into his ‹Inventory›.
Unlike what he'd expected, the robots almost immediately shook off the effects of his Chaos energy and erupted with plasma bursts all over their bodies. It was as if every individual nanite was releasing bursts of plasma that shook his body away and prevented him from taking them into his ‹Inventory›
"I'd forgotten about his adaptability," Alex said with an annoyed expression. "Of course, he found a workaround after seeing Chaos energy break these things a single time.
-x-X-x-
"How the hell did he even come up with a counter for Chaos magic..." Alex said with slight disbelief as he sent multiple tentacles at the Sentinels with the full power of his ‹Cosmic Physique Creation›. "I don't want to use Infinity Stones on these robots."
"You having trouble, buddy?" Laura had retreated and was standing beside him while observing how Alex's tentacles reached a sort of stalemate against the Sentinels. The raw power he held was significantly greater, but his enemies had even greater durability and repairability, which allowed them to keep him from getting a total victory.
"No, I'm just thinking of a way to take care of these things without having to depend on the Infinity Stones. It feels like overkill to use such tools against simple robots."
"Can't you just use that technology interface thing you have to hack into them?"
"I've been trying since they appeared, but they have some kind of impenetrable defence against every single penetration attempt. Whenever I find a node to enter, it gets scrambled. It's practically impossible for me to brute force into their system." Updates are released by novèlfire.net
"So, what's the plan?"
"I guess I'll have to use an Infinity Stone," Alex said with a sigh. "After all this time…I just thought I'd be more powerful, you know? Somehow, despite having the literal powers of Thor at my fingertips and the full backing of the embodiment of the Chaos Dimension, I still can't entirely overpower a fully prepared Tony Stark… Kinda depressing, honestly."
"Dude, now is not the time for an existential crisis," Laura said to him with wide, disbelieving eyes. "Now, are you going to take care of these robots or not?"
"Yeah," he nodded as the yellow glow of the Mind Stone erupted from his form. His EP went down in doves, but that didn't matter since he'd collected quite a large amount of it from his multiple sources. Immediately, he used the power of the Infinity Stone to overpower the defenses of the five sentinels and take control of them. He immediately immobilized them and took manual control over them after removing the AI that was controlling them. Once that was done, he wrapped them up and sent them packing to his ‹Inventory›. As a consequence, however, he used up a true shitload of his Bioenergy to mitigate the backlash that came from using the Mind Stone. Of course, it still wasn't enough to cause any issues since his reserves were currently in the hundreds of thousands.
[Bioenergy -28964]
"That required a lot more Mind Authority than I'd expected," Alex said. "What do you think is going on?"
"There are probably Infinity Stones here," Laura said, the obvious. "Duh. How else do you think these robots were casually ignoring your Chaos energy?"
"No, it's probably something else…" He said. "Let us move on."
Laura looked at Alex with a confused and suspicious expression as he walked forward. She then shrugged and caught up to him before grabbing his hand tightly.
"I'm getting a bad feeling here, Alex."
"It's going to be fine," he said. "We just need to go in and deal with Tony and whatever last-ditch failsafes that he has."
"If you say so…"
…
The next two hours, Alex and Laura spent jumping through multiple hoops as they descended the floors. Despite directly jumping down the elevator shaft, different kinds of robots kept interrupting them and delaying them from reaching the core of the facility. Of course, they weren't particularly in a hurry and weren't moving at their fastest possible speed since they had already destroyed the space elevator. There was no place that Tony Stark could run, which allowed them to take things at their own pace. They even ended up taking a bit of a detour to see the glass cage that had been Laura's home for almost a quarter of her life.
By the time they reached the primary command center on the bottom floor, Laura's bad feeling had only intensified as the situation started to seem a little suspicious to her. The way Alex was simply waving off her concerns wasn't helping.
"Here we are," Alex said with a glint in his eyes as he walked forward.
"Hey," Laura grabbed his hand and stopped him. "I feel like you are being impatient and irrational. And not the way you usually are. What's going on?"
"It's all fine," he said. "Now let's get this over once and for all."
Alex put his hands on the metal door and ripped it all apart as if it were paper before stepping through it, with Laura hesitantly following him. Though her hesitation was completely wiped away when she saw the person standing in the middle of the room with a large arc reactor behind him. He only had a pair of pants on, and his torso was full of exposed veins of metal that coursed all over his body, leading to the red reactor in the center of his chest. There was a reddness in his eyes that irked Laura despite the fury and bloodthirst that was bubbling within her.
"You're finally here," Tony said with a mix of a human and robotic voice.
Laura looked physically uncomfortable as Alex calmly looked Tony Stark in the eye.
"Apex, the little symbiote that could," Tony continued speaking. "You've been making quite a few moves recently, haven't you? Taking over the more vulnerable Earths to make them all a part of your budding galactic federation. Or is it going to be an empire? Tell me, have you found a way to harness existence itself and turn it into your own version of the Power Cosmic? I'm especially excited for that to come to fruition among all the plans that you have cooking up in that head of yours. You already have three whole Earths completely subdued in your little Gaia Federation, with a fourth one being a partial part of it, not to mention this one… And I'm not even including the nine planets of the Sovereign that you ultimately saved from the High Evolutionary's destruction. I've had my eye on you for a while."
"Motherfucker…" Alex said suddenly with gritted teeth.
"Have you realized it?" There was an unnaturally eerie smile on Tony's face that made him almost look like a puppet. "You may believe that you merely took the Extremis formula from me that day and escaped, but you exposed yourself. Exposed your vulnerability. See, you believed your cyber interface to be invincible. What do you think now?"
Suddenly, a literally obscene amount of Chaos energy started channeling through Alex as a red silhouette appeared above him. At the same time, Laura felt her entire body flooding with endless Bioenergy that threatened to overwhelm her instantly, though it disappeared just as it came, resulting in a prominent yellow glow being released from her form.
"This is the problem with natural life." Tony's voice grew even more mechanical as three protrusions appeared on his forehead. "You make mistakes. You don't capitalize on your true capabilities. Such unimaginable potential, and you waste it in your depravity. Do not worry, I will harness your true potential and make you a god that not a single entity in this Cosmos can stand up to."
"As usual, too ambitious for your own good, Ultron," Alex was still burning away obscene amounts of Chaos energy and Bioenergy to use the Mind and Reality Stones to keep the assault to his mind and soul at bay. "If you had been patient and waited until your infection spread further, I wouldn't have stood a chance. Now your scheme is exposed, I can keep you at bay while I take out all of your power."
"Using Infinity Stones to hold me off. A commendable plan. But can you truly handle a battle of attrition here?" The three protrusions on his forehead glowed different colors as three different fragments of the Infinity Stones made themselves visible. At the center was the Mind Stone, while on its left was the Reality Stone and on its right was the Power Stone. Ultron had the backing of three Infinity Stones, and one of them was the Power Stone. "You do not possess any fragments of the Power Stone. Can you truly handle this without the amplification that it provides?"
"You know, Laura. This is why I despise Charles and pretty much any telepath I come across. They always act like they know everything about you, forcing you into a corner until you don't have anything to do other than make a final desperate move to take them down once and for all. It happened when Charles tried to force himself into my mind. And it's going to happen because Ultron sent a fucking dormant virus into my head years ago when I was naive and a fool," Alex said.
"What are you talking about, Alex…"
"I'm going to do something really risky, okay? Don't panic."
Alex suddenly shot forward and grabbed Tony Stark's shoulders. Immediately, he interfaced directly with Ultron and pulled it into his mind for a single confrontation where one of them would emerge victorious.
"Alex," Laura screamed as she saw him grab Tony Stark's shoulders. A diabolically victorious smile appeared on Tony's face as Ultron welcomed Alex's actions, confident in its capabilities to overwhelm the Symbiote entirely.
"He says that I'm impatient and then just charges at me without any rhyme or reason." A robot appeared beside Laura, prompting her to slash into scrap metal. "No need to be rude, dearie. I believe we are going to be fine friends once I take over this symbiote. Of course, your status as one of my primary hosts will be downgraded. You are far from being valuable enough for this spot. You and that Natasha. Such needless hosts. And his obsession with Gwen Stacy. Do you know he was considering a third one of those? I'll be dropping most of the unneeded baggage he has strung along."
Laura didn't hear Ultron's words any further and simply crushed its head under her heel. As she focused on Alex, who had a furious expression on his face. Yet, unfortunately, the robot's words didn't stop.
"You have to be self-conscious enough to understand this; you are barely anything without him," another robot came up and spoke. "A helpless little girl who can stab really fast and heal. You aren't exactly a gold mine of powers. The only hosts that deserve to be kept are Wanda and Susan. The others are all barely better than baggage. There wouldn't be any loss if they were dropped."
"The reason you say that is because you're terrified of Wanda, aren't you? Even now, you don't have the capability to stand up against her directly," Laura said. "Does that make you trash to be discarded as well, huh? I thought you were Tony Stark and wanted to gut you for the past half-decade or so. Now that I've realized that you're just an AI gone rogue, I can't find it in myself to care."
"You will care when I take over your symbiote friend and take absolute control over every single powerful entity that he is in contact with. I will be able to keep this cluster safer than he could ever imagine."
"Keep dreaming that, Ultron. Alex isn't letting you get your way. You see, he may be utterly terrified of telepaths, but he is far stricter with himself. Since he fucked up in the past, he is going to kill you no matter what he has to do. There is no running away this time. You aren't surviving this Ultron. No matter what you try."
"We shall see about that."
…
At this time, Alex was in a purely white space as he stood off against a yellow, featureless entity that floated above the white expanse. It was his mindscape—a place he hadn't ever been since he was terrified of having anything to do with telepaths. But Ultron had brought him here and was threateningly floating inside. If that yellow entity touched anything in his mind, it would start infecting him.
"What are you waiting for, Ultron?" Alex asked. "Worried I'll call Wanda and ask her for help?"
"No," the featureless blob spoke. "I am simply taking this place in before I leave you helpless to resist my control. You need not worry, Apex," it said his name with derision. "You will not die. You and your knowledge will all become a part of me. Just like Tony Stark became a part of me. I will bring everything that you have built to heights that you can't ever imagine."
"Since we're chatting," Alex shrugged. "How'd you even take over Tony's actual body? I thought you were limited to mechanical stuff."
"Since you can target the synaptic impulses in a human's brain, why do you think others are incapable of such a feat? I simply added enough modifications to this man's body to allow be to have a robust interface and voila. He became Ultron. Just like you will."
"Will I, now?" Alex said with a smile. "Humor me for a bit, will you?"
"Are you trying to stall?" Ultron asked.
"No, I'm just curious why you didn't just expand further outward and choose to stay holed up in this underground bunker while pretending to be Jarvis to the populous outside. You always had the option to take those special Sentinel robots of yours out and conquer other planets."
"For that, I blame a core directive that was installed within my code when I took over Stark," he said. "My prime consciousness can never leave this Bastion. No matter what I try, it is impossible for me to directly control anything that is outside the Bastion."
"Oh, so that's why those robots of yours didn't come after me and Laura after we escaped the Bastion the first time," Alex said understandingly. "To think Ultron could go far enough to breach into the spiritual aspect of things. I'd blame myself for being naive and interfacing with your terminal, but this is just so far-fetched that it was impossible for me to have expected it. Tell me, are you inside Gaia as well? Controlling her every action like a puppetmaster."
"Not as of yet," Ultron said. "While I did put in a node within your precious artificial intelligence, I am not yet in full control of it. As much as I would like to continue this conversation, I think it's time you stopped stalling."
"Yeah, thank The-One-Above-All for foresight, and Irene," Alex smiled victoriously as the featureless blob that was Ultron's consciousness suddenly warped as if being punched in the gut. It released a pained scream as a green entity emerged from the point of impact. Similar to Ultron's manifestation, it was also featureless. "Ultron, meet Gaia. If you've been spying on my mind for so long, you should be aware of just how much I know. I developed a special counter against an impromptu invasion from Ultron while assuming the worst."
"Pitiful," Ultron spat as its figure stabilized.
"Now, I could never have imagined that you would end up infecting me directly, but hey, your greed ended up giving me a way to bring Gaia in here."
"Master, I don't think I can take Ultron in our current situation," Gaia's feminine voice came from the green blob. "If it were going after me, I could purge it, but you are the one it is trying to infiltrate."
Ultron released a powerful roar that shook Alex's mindscape before merging into the ground. Immediately, the whites of his mindscape started getting dyed yellow.
Alex had a frown on his face as Gaia tried her best to stop Ultron, but she could barely even slow him down.
"What do you want me to do, master?" Gaia asked. "I can't stop him."
"I know," Alex said, trying his best to internally resist Ultron's encroachment, but it was mostly unsuccessful. "Gaia. I think we need to take some extreme measures."
"What?"
"Come here," he said. "No need to stop him anymore. I'm going to do something else."
"We don't have much time, Master," she said before quickly floating over to him.
"I know. That's why I'm going to do something I only ever theorized. You are here through Ultron right now, correct? I'm going to interface with you directly and amplify you with the full Mind Authority that I possess. I want you to become one with me. I will guide you and lead you into my consciousness and soul so that we can purge Ultron together, okay?"
Without even hearing Gaia's response, he grabbed the green blob and melded into it.
At the same time, in both Farm Earth and Research, Alex's body entered the two server rooms that ran Gaia. Both of his bodies formed a direct cyber interface with her servers and allowed her to infect him the same way that Ultron was doing. The difference this time, however, was that Gaia was fully obedient to his every command. She had been developed as the perfect assistant for him so that eventually, she could help him manage his empire. Now, however, she was going to become a part of him.
Gaia merged into Alex's consciousness, rapidly coloring his white consciousness space green, far faster than Ultron, since Alex was not only accepting her but also guiding her to merge with him. Soon, the entirety of his white consciousness space was populated by either Gaia or Ultron. With his support and guidance alongside the backing of two merged fragments of the Mind Stone acting to amplify her, she was able to dominate Ultron.
However, instead of purging it, Alex had a grander ambition. He commanded Gaia to take the model that composed Ultron and add it to her own system with his guidance. No human could work at the pace with which Alex worked to integrate Ultron with Gaia, but with his unrealistic processing power and the support of not only his own Mind Stone, but also the one that Ultron had, he amplified Gaia to such an extent that she not only protected him from Ultron, but also integrated its most robust aspects into her own model, making herself even more complete.
The best part was that now, Gaia was going to be running directly on Alex's consciousness. She was both separate from him and a part of him. He still needed some time to analyze what the implications of doing something like that were, but he knew that he now possessed far greater control over Gaia than he did before.
-x-X-x-
Back in the Bastion's underground control center, Laura was still waiting for Alex after ten minutes. Ultron had continued to try and discourage her and make her feel bad about herself for a few minutes before pausing, telling her that Alex most likely had the upper hand in the situation. So, when he finally opened his eyes and threw Tony's lifeless body to the side, she couldn't help but jump up and hug him from the back.
"Tell me you aren't Ultron," she whispered desperately. "I can't—"
"It's me, Laura. You have no need to worry," he said. "While I may not have expected that I would be infected by Ultron, I did have a failsafe in place for his eventual emergence."
"You have no idea how scared I was… The further we descended into this place, the stranger you acted. It was as if you were under someone else's influence… and Ultron, he kept saying all this stuff…it was, I couldn't help but think the worst."
"Shh," Alex said. "I know, baby. I know. Don't worry about it. Come here." Thin tentacles emerged from her back and shifted Laura such that she was hugging him from the front. "Everything is fine," he said, kissing her forehead. "I'm here with you, and you are still one of the most important women in my life. Don't think about the words he said to rile you up. You can feel me, right? You can feel the exact emotions that I have toward you. If I were that calculative, I would have simply continued replacing hosts until I found the most optimal ones."
"Mm…" She buried her face in his neck and hugged him with all her strength. "What happened?" She asked weakly without moving in the slightest. "To Ultron."
"Gaia killed it and absorbed its most powerful algorithms for herself," he said.
"Gaia? How did she get involved?"
"You see, if you are working with an artificial intelligence, you have to be worried about it going rogue. Not to mention, some version of Ultron could find your artificial intelligence and take control of everything that it has authority over," he said. "Such a scenario isn't just a possibility, it's an eventuality. I had to be fully prepared for exactly that unless I wanted to hand my empire to Ultron on a silver platter. So I had a preventative failsafe that would allow me to commandeer Gaia directly by taking over all of her processes and algorithms and kill or at least purge Ultron from her system."
"You can do that? Take over such an artificial intelligence…" Laura asked.
"Not a human, remember? I have enough processing power to rival multiple quantum supercomputers," he said. "I can directly run Gaia on my consciousness under such circumstances. Of course, I never expected that Ultron would end up targeting me directly. But working with Gaia, I not only purged Ultron from my system, but even took parts of it and integrated them into Gaia. Of course, there was a little caveat to doing things that way. The failsafe ended up being a bit more permanent than I'd expected."
"What do you mean?"
"Gaia is now a part of me. Literally," he said. "Like a secondary consciousness. All of her code runs both in my consciousness and on her servers on their respective planets."
"I'm confused."
"It's a confusing situation," he said. "Think of it this way, my primary consciousness is…well, me. Now, there is a secondary consciousness that is both me and not really me. Technically, Gaia is an individual artificial intelligence with her own thoughts, logics, and directives. But now, instead of running the algorithms that derive those thoughts from her code and her servers, she is running them on my primary consciousness. For simplicity's sake, you can think of Gaia as an assistant that I have who always knows what I'm thinking and is fully obedient to me."
"You sure she can't get hacked?" She asked with concern. "What about running parts of her on the servers? What's that all about?"
"She just killed a version of Ultron that had multiple Infinity Stones, including a fragment of the Mind Stone backing him. And she came out all the stronger for it. I think she's good on the hacking part. As for the other thing, think of it as an off-site server. Gaia is now merged into my consciousness, but I can still run parts of her on external servers to reduce the workload on my consciousness."
"I think you can stop trying to explain it to me now. The more you try to explain, the stupider I feel. Gaia is now a part of you and runs off of you. End of story. Whatever complex stuff you have going on in the background can stay in the background."
"You see, the best part about this is that I don't have to do anything too complicated to get the Widows access to Gaia now. They can simply interface with her through their chokers. She's going to help me significantly in managing my tertiary bonds."
"So just like that farm of yours, you are going to hand the pleasuring of your tertiary bonds to Gaia? Man, am I glad I got you to form a secondary bond with Illyana and Kitty. To be left to the devices of your artificial intelligence. Depressing."
"Hey, for one thing, there is no such thing as handing over the pleasure aspects to Gaia. That's still all me. All Gaia will do is give them their information and directives and resolve any queries that they might have. I have possessive feelings toward the Widows and won't simply hand them over to Gaia. They will still call out the name of Apex in their restrictive and pleasure-filled nights. Hell, if anything, now, I can be significantly more hands-on with the women on the farm. While Gaia manages the boring stuff, I can start involving myself in the more fun stuff again."
"Speaking of the farm, how is the whole Qi stuff going?" She asked. "If there is any significant progress, could you help me awaken it?"
"Maybe some other time, when I have a more robust system in place. For now, barely a hundred prisoners have awakened Qi, and barely ten of them can actually harness it and provide me with a significant amount of EP."
"What about that rebel woman who is a sort of leader of a small country. That Silver Sable woman whom you captured a while ago."
"She's from Symkaria," he said. "Her country is thriving, as was my promise to her. She is pretty used to her current life in prison. She trains every day until her limits, enjoys mind-breaking pleasure all the time, and gets to read every once in a while because of her obedience. In around four more years, she should be out of there and join the widows as my most obedient general aside from Yelena."
"I doubt she even remembers that by now."
"She does," he nodded. "Not only does she remember that promise, but I also talk to her once every year to give her a status update on how her country is rapidly expanding and how I am very impressed with her progress in Qi training. Then we have some very enjoyable sex where she shows me just how submissive being commanded by Gaia has made her." ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ novel[f]ire.net
"Moving on from your weird fetishist sex stuff…" Laura rolled her eyes. "What now?"
"Well now, I will talk to Yelena and integrate Gaia into the management system of the Widows—"
"Not that, dumbass," Laura slapped his arm. "The other thing."
"I know," Alex nodded before kissing her forehead again. "And that's your decision. Not mine. Are you interested in talking to your old man, Charles, and the rest? That's all up to you, Laura. Not me."
As Laura paused deep in thought, Alex was still examining how Gaia's connection to him worked.
Using his original analogy of his soul being a complete and stable sphere in the Klyntar Soul Dimension that he kept hidden from the other symbiotes, Gaia's presence was like a faint green patch inside that was deshaped, similar to all the other Klyntar souls that Alex had seen before. The presence of that green patch inside Alex's soul was what made Gaia go beyond a simple artificial intelligence to one that also possessed a spiritual presence like Ultron. That allowed her to stand toe-to-toe against Ultron, and with Alex's guidance and control, she was able to entirely eradicate and absorb Ultron into herself. Yet, there were no traces of its yellow in her green spirit. That was because Alex made sure that there would be no influence of Ultron on his amazing and obedient assistant.
'Having Gaia around is going to make things so much easier… I could simply hand over control of some of my bodies to her to handle, and I wouldn't have to worry about not knowing what was going on because I can see all of her memories and actions in real time. I won't have to waste my decision-making and thoughts on the meaningless bodies that are just lying low on different planets. And if something important happens, I'll know immediately.'