"Whoa, you scared me! Hi, Kai, long time no see!"
Daisy Johnson jumped when someone suddenly appeared beside her.
After realizing it was Kai, she grinned and waved.
"Your entrances are still as flashy as ever. So, what brings you here?"
"It was Dr. Selvig who asked me to come find you," Kai said, scanning the area around them. "Is Jane up there?"
"Yeah. She just went up with the probe—said the readings matched the ones from when we were in New Mexico." Daisy sighed.
"Honestly, I think she's hoping Thor will show up again, so she ran up there alone."
Kai smirked. "Daisy, take everyone out of here first. I'll go find Jane—it's dangerous up there."
"Dangerous?" Daisy glanced toward the strange shimmering distortion under the staircase.
"Yeah, no kidding… You got it, Kai. Jane's all yours!"
With that, Daisy hurried off with her assistant and a few kids, mumbling something about not getting an autograph on the way out.
Sensing Jane Foster's location, Kai's form flickered—and in the next instant, he was on the top floor of the abandoned factory.
The corridor was decayed and shadowed, sunlight barely filtering through the filthy windows.
The whole place felt haunted—quiet, dark, and unsettling.
There she was.
Jane Foster, walking carefully down the hall with a detector in her hand, moving toward a broken doorway.
"Jane!" Kai called.
Jane turned sharply, startled. Her eyes widened when she recognized him.
"Kai? What are you doing here?"
"Dr. Selvig asked me to check on you," Kai said, stepping closer while eyeing the shattered doorway ahead.
He could feel the distortion in space—an energy unlike anything else.
He knew it was the barrier leading to the space where the Aether, the essence of the Reality Stone, was hidden.
But the moment he stood there, an odd sensation washed over him—a deep, instinctive pull.
The Aether was calling to him.
Jane smiled faintly, about to speak, when the corridor suddenly howled with wind.
The garbage on the ground swirled violently, forming a miniature cyclone.
The suction force yanked Jane off her feet.
"Jane!" Kai reached for her arm and caught her—but didn't fight the pull.
Something told him this was where he needed to go.
And then—silence.
They appeared at the edge of a dark, eerie cliff.
A massive stone bridge stretched across the void, lined with ancient pillars, vanishing into endless darkness below.
"Ahhh!!" Jane screamed, clutching Kai's arm tightly.
"Where… where are we? Kai, what is this place?!"
"Probably because of that," Kai said calmly, patting her hand to steady her nerves.
He pointed toward the center of the bridge—two enormous stone blocks pressed together, with a thick, dark red liquid swirling between them. The Aether.
Jane's fear instantly turned into scientific fascination.
"This… this must be the anomaly Dr. Selvig detected! Incredible!"
She tried to step forward, but Kai stopped her.
"Careful."
Before he could say more, the Aether surged.
Dark red energy burst out, wrapping around them both like living smoke.
Jane screamed again as the Aether latched onto her arm, pulsing and seeping into her skin.
No matter how hard she shook her arm, it wouldn't come off—it merged with her.
Kai looked at his own arm as the same energy coiled around him.
The sensation was overwhelming—raw, cosmic power filling his veins. Reality itself trembled at his fingertips.
He raised his palm. Dark red energy flickered and flowed within it.
Focusing on the two massive stones, Kai merely thought—and they disintegrated into countless fragments, scattering into the air like dust.
He exhaled, "So this… is the power of the Reality Stone."
The Aether could modify and distort reality itself—turning thought into matter, dreams into existence.
Science and logic meant nothing before its power.
But even with some of the Aether now inside him, Kai quickly realized he couldn't fully control it.
For one, part of the Aether was still inside Jane.
And second, he needed something to properly contain it—like Thanos' Infinity Gauntlet.
Without that, even his enhanced body wouldn't withstand its corruption forever.
He looked over at Jane, who was trembling and rubbing her arm.
"Guess that means I'll have to take you to Asgard," Kai muttered.
"We'll find Malekith—the Dark Elf King—and figure out how to get that stuff out of you."
He sighed. "What a hassle."
Then, the familiar voice of his system echoed in his mind:
Borsalino role-play performance +0.2%
Kai blinked, "…Huh? That's new."
Usually, his Kizaru role-play progress increased by only 0.1% at a time.
Why 0.2% now? Was it because of the Reality Stone?
He'd encountered the Mind Stone and the Space Stone before—neither had triggered this effect.
But this one… the Aether could turn imagination into reality.
And his own powers were literally built on role-playing—on making fantasy real.
That could only mean one thing.
"The Reality Stone… suits me perfectly," he murmured, glancing down at the unconscious Jane Foster.
He smirked, "Well, no matter what, this Stone's mine."