"First, let me introduce her," Anastasia said, gesturing toward Wanda who stood quietly beside her on the stage.
"Her name is Wanda Maximoff. She used to be just a normal girl, living happily with her family and her little brother in Sokovia. A completely ordinary life, as ordinary as life could get in a country already torn by political instability."
Anastasia's voice remained level, factual, deliberately stripped of melodrama.
"But then the civil war started. Her parents were killed directly in the early violence. Gone overnight, without warning, without any particular reason beyond being in the wrong place when powerful people decided to settle their disagreements with weapons."
"The two siblings survived somehow, barely. And then one day, a bomb fell from the sky and landed directly in their room."
A few people in the hall shifted uncomfortably.
"It didn't explode," Anastasia continued. "Perhaps they were lucky. Or perhaps unlucky, depending on how you measure those two days they spent hiding under their bed—two days without eating, without drinking, without sleeping, just waiting for the inevitable. Waiting to find out if they would die."
She paused, letting that image settle properly.
"The bomb was manufactured by Stark Industries. One of your most celebrated companies."
The discomfort in the hall intensified measurably. Tony's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes did.
"I'm not telling you this to gather sympathy," Anastasia said clearly, preempting the reaction. "I'm telling you because this is not a rare story. This is not a tragedy that happened to one unlucky family. This is the story of most people in Sokovia. Most people who were alive when those conflicts were being conducted on our soil by foreign powers pursuing foreign interests."
"Including my own story," she added simply. "My parents were also killed by random ordnance that had nothing to do with them personally. I was left with only my brother."
The hall was completely quiet now.
"Elric understood this," Anastasia continued. "He understood it because he lived it himself—his family also died in that violence. And even after gaining his power, even after reaching a level where revenge was entirely possible, he chose not to pursue it. He chose to focus entirely on developing Sokovia, on building something rather than destroying something."
"His reasoning was simple: he didn't want ordinary people to experience the same tragedies we all faced," she said. "Not Sokovian people, and not other ordinary people either. He had no interest in becoming the thing that destroyed us."
She looked out across the assembled representatives.
"But now you're asking us to save the same people who are responsible for creating those tragedies. To put our people at risk for the benefit of those who never extended that same consideration to us."
"Many of you sitting in this room are probably thinking: 'I'm innocent. I personally didn't make those decisions. Why should I be punished for what my leaders did?'"
Anastasia nodded slowly. "I understand that feeling completely."
"So let me ask you the exact same question in return," she said. "Just like you were innocent, people like Wanda were also innocent. And while those innocent people were suffering, while children were hiding under beds waiting to find out if they would die, you—your societies, your comfortable countries—did nothing. You watched, or you looked away, or you simply didn't know and didn't ask."
"Just like that," Anastasia said quietly, "we have decided to do the same. To not take action."
The silence that followed was a different quality entirely.
In the comment section, the anger had gone strangely quiet:
[...Why does this make so much sense? I hate that this makes sense.]
[If something like this happened to me, forget helping—I'd give everyone the middle finger on my way out and never look back.]
[This is wrong but also I don't know what to say to make it wrong.]
[So what do we do? Just lie down and wait? Maybe if we stay very still they'll ignore us?]
[Actually insane idea: what if we destroy Earth ourselves first? Then there's nothing left for Asgard to destroy. We win technically.]
[STOP. She's speaking again.]
"But as I said before," Anastasia continued, "it is not impossible."
The hall leaned forward collectively.
"It's actually not that difficult at all," she said, and her tone had shifted slightly—less eulogy, more business proposal. "Not because our strength is so much greater than Asgard's. But because of a different reason entirely."
She let the pause extend for exactly the right amount of time.
"Asgard's current queen is deeply in love with Mr. Elric."
The conference hall produced a sound that could only be described as an entire room simultaneously forgetting how to process information.
"Some time ago, Asgard's second prince visited Earth," Anastasia explained. "Following him, Mr. Elric traveled to Asgard—he wanted to explore beyond Earth, see what the universe actually looked like. While there, he had various encounters with the current queen."
"The details aren't important," she added diplomatically. "What is important is the outcome: the current Queen of Asgard is very much in love with Mr. Elric. She has proposed marriage to him multiple times."
"However," Anastasia said, "as you may have gathered from her personality during recent events, she is... not the most straightforward person to have a relationship with. Mr. Elric has not agreed to her proposals."
[WHAT.]
[Excuse me WHAT.]
[We are out here playing hardcore survival mode and they are running a dating simulator?!]
[Hold on. HOLD ON. Does this mean the entire invasion was basically... a very elaborate way to force his hand?]
[We're not pawns in a geopolitical conflict, we're pawns in a YANDERE ROMANCE?!]
[We are casualties of a woman who couldn't accept rejection like a normal person.]
[I am both furious and genuinely impressed.]
In the conference hall itself, several world leaders appeared to be having quiet existential crises. Some were staring at the ceiling. One appeared to be silently laughing, though it was unclear if it was humor or hysteria.
Fury had his hand over his face.
Tony looked like someone had hit him with a philosophical hammer. The expression on his face suggested he was experiencing several emotions simultaneously and wasn't sure which one to process first.
Anastasia pressed on without acknowledging the chaos her revelation had created.
"I won't beat around the bush," she said. "We are willing to help. But the condition is this: it must be for our own people."
"So Sokovia is now open to accepting the surrender of any country or any group that wishes to join us as a vassal state," she announced clearly. "You will come under Sokovia's protection. In exchange, you will accept our governance structure and the terms we set."
"Under those terms, we will handle the Asgard situation," she said simply.
The comment section lost its mind entirely:
[Wait that's IT? That's the condition? I just have to agree to be governed by the people who have functional technology and apparently a direct line to the cosmic queen? WHERE DO I SIGN?]
[Hold on let me think about this. Option A: certain death in six days. Option B: become a vassal state of Sokovia. This is genuinely the easiest decision I've ever made.]
[I can still finish One Piece! I CAN STILL FINISH ONE PIECE!]
[But what if Japan doesn't agree? The queen sounds like she's head over heels for this guy—she might just wipe out whoever doesn't submit just to impress him.]
[Okay so the smart move is obviously to agree immediately.]
[I'm already packing. Sokovia here I come.]
In the conference hall, the representatives were already leaning toward each other in urgent whispered discussions, the careful diplomatic protocols of normal international relations completely abandoned in favor of raw survival calculation.
"We will be waiting for your answer," Anastasia said, and without another word, without a question-and-answer session, without any of the standard conference formalities that usually padded these events for hours—
A portal opened directly beside her, its edges shimmering with Sokovian energy.
She and Wanda stepped through it without hesitation.
"Ma'am, please wait—"
"Ma'am!"
Multiple voices called out simultaneously, people rising from their seats, hands reaching forward uselessly as the portal simply closed behind them, leaving nothing but the faint shimmer of displaced air.
The hall erupted.
And across the world, on every screen, in every living room and phone and laptop, the same eruption happened simultaneously as the broadcast continued playing, every person on Earth processing what they'd just heard in their own language, in their own context.
Sokovia - The Castle
Inside the castle, Elric and the rest of the crew had been watching the conference broadcast on a screen.
The atmosphere was casual—Wanda and Anastasia had only been gone for the duration of the conference, which meant it was just Elric, Storm, and various Sokovian staff monitoring the global reaction.
When the broadcast ended, Storm turned from the screen to look at Elric.
"Will it be enough?" she asked, her voice carrying genuine uncertainty. "Will they actually agree? I know their lives are on the line, but people's greed doesn't have boundaries. Some of them will definitely try to exploit this situation somehow, try to manipulate the terms to their advantage."
Elric considered this for a moment, watching the chaos unfolding on the monitoring feeds. Leaders calling emergency sessions. Representatives frantically consulting with home governments. The public pressure building in real time as ordinary citizens started demanding their governments accept Sokovia's terms before the deadline.
"Don't worry too much about it," he said finally.
He glanced toward the AI interface. "Aline, contact all the people we have positioned around the various countries. Tell them they know what to do."