Dennis's POV
I chewed my toast slowly and let my mind do what it did best: organize chaos.
The science team was my most glaring weakness. Ray Palmer was brilliant, a genius-tier physicist with a specialization in subatomic engineering who could shrink between molecules. Curtis Holt understood Technology & Engineering at an intuitive level that most doctoral candidates would weep over. And Peter, sweet reckless Peter, had a mind for biochemistry and applied physics that rivaled people three times his age. Three exceptional brains. Not nearly enough.
For what was coming, for Chitauri biotech, for Loki's scepter and whatever Infinity Stone powered it, for the future tech villains and multiversal anomalies I know we're coming and most importantly to just help people by improving technology as a whole, I needed a research division that could crack open the universe and read its source code. That meant Banner. That meant Reed Richards. And in a perfect world, that meant Tony Stark, though Tony came with enough ego and institutional baggage to sink a dozen aircraft carriers and to be perfectly honest I'd never really liked him in the movies or comics and I'm sorry but not even RDJ could make me change my mind.
I sipped my orange juice and pulled up Jason's latest field report by sensing his feelings through the tether, a faint impression of frustration caused by dead ends. Jason had been hunting Bruce Banner for over a week now, combing through every lead William and Legion could extract from the labyrinth of S.H.I.E.L.D. and black-market intelligence databases. The problem was elegantly simple: Banner didn't want to be found. He moved through places where cameras didn't exist, slept in villages that barely had electricity, paid for everything in cash, and changed locations with an erratic pattern that suggested either genius-level countersurveillance training or clinical paranoia. Probably both.
Jason was good. Jason was one of my best field operatives. But sometimes you just needed boots on the ground, plural, spread across multiple continents with orders to check every clinic and slum and monastery where a quiet American doctor with sad eyes might be hiding. Even though the Rank One wing was nearly at capacity, I'll summon more soldiers today. Dedicated search teams. Banner wasn't a luxury. He was a necessity, and I wanted him yesterday. Luckily most of them will be out on assignments so the room situation won't be a problem when one group leaves one will be coming back so it will never be over stuffed.
The thought process had barely crystallized when the System decided to agree with me.
Gold text bloomed across my vision, sharp and clean against the morning light.
NEW MISSION: Recruit Heroic Super-Geniuses for your developing Science Team. Targets: 1. Bruce Banner. 2. Reed Richards. 3. Tony Stark (Optional). Rewards: 1. 500 Sex Points. 2. One 50% Off Recruitment Token. 3. Minor Ability Upgrade Token.
I set my juice down carefully so I wouldn't crack the porcelain. Five hundred points plus a fifty-percent-off token plus an ability upgrade. For doing something I was already planning. The System didn't hand out active missions often, and when it did, the rewards scaled to difficulty. This was generous, which meant the System considered acquiring three of the most brilliant and paranoid minds on the planet to be appropriately challenging.
Unless I cheated-which I definitely was going to do-this was a fair assessment.
The fifty-percent token alone was worth the effort mine you I still have the seventy-five-percent one but I want to save it for now. At current prices, that could turn a six-thousand-point Young Justice papa Zatanna into three thousand, which combined with my current seventeen-forty and whatever I ground before Monday's sale ended...
I mentally locked the mission into my priority queue and moved to the second item on my list.
Bucky Barnes.
William and Legion had been grinding through hundreds of cross-referenced Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. files for over a week, and yesterday morning they believed they'd finally isolated a pattern. A cryo-storage facility. Eastern Europe. The details were still being verified, but the confidence level was high. If they were right, then somewhere in a frozen bunker, a brainwashed super-soldier was sleeping in ice, waiting for his next set of kill orders from masters who didn't deserve to breathe the same air as him.
Bringing Bucky in wasn't just the right thing to do. It was strategic. Steve Rogers, the genuine article Captain America still frozen in Arctic ice but scheduled for recovery by S.H.I.E.L.D. within weeks according to our intelligence projections, had exactly one weakness in the world: James Buchanan Barnes. Save the best friend, and the legend follows. It was almost too clean.
A thought curled through my mind with the lazy confidence of a cat stretching in sunlight. Maybe I should just steal all the male Avengers.
I almost laughed at myself. Ridiculous. Greedy. Completely impractical given the political implications and the sheer logistical nightmare of managing that many alpha personalities under one roof even with the Dawngleam bonds help unless I was extremely patient and let the bond do its thing naturally or I did them like I did Frank.
The System pinged again.
NEW MISSION: Recruit all future male members of the Avengers to your Harem. Targets: 1. Steve Rogers. 2. Bruce Banner. 3. Tony Stark. 4. Clint Barton. 5. Thor Odinson. 6. Pietro Maximoff. 7. Scott Lang. 8. James Rhodes. 9. Peter Parker. 10. Bucky Barnes. 11. T'Challa Udaku. 12. John Walker. 13. Alexei Shostakov. 14. Robert Reynolds. Progress: 1 of 14 achieved. Rewards: 1,000,000 Sex Points. One 90% Off Recruitment Token. One Free Recruitment Token. High Ability Upgrade Token x3.
My fork stopped halfway to my mouth.
One million Sex Points.
A ninety-percent-off token.
A free recruitment token.
Three high-tier ability upgrades.
I set the fork down. Picked up my drink. Put it down again because my hand was not entirely steady and I refused to let anyone at this table see that.
One million points would let me summon almost anyone. Anyone. papa Zatanna, the much more expensive daughter Zatanna, Dr. Fate, Constantine, all of them and their extended families with points to spare. The ninety-percent token on top of that was obscene. The free token meant I could pull someone from the multiverse without spending a single point. And three high ability upgrades could elevate my core skills to levels I hadn't even theorized about yet.
The cost was fourteen men. Fourteen powerful, complicated, scattered-across-the-globe-and-sometimes-across-the-galaxy men, some of whom hadn't even manifested their powers yet, one of whom was literally a Norse god, and to be honest I didn't even know who the fuck the last three on the list are but I will find out that's for sure.
I looked at the number again. One of fourteen achieved. Peter. My sweet, eager, already-bonded Peter Parker, who was currently at home with Ben and May probably eating cereal and trying not to ask for a repeat of what his uncle had done to him in the backseat of his armored SUV until they were alone or May's moral hang-ups faded away like theirs.
Thirteen to go.
I was not going to pretend this wasn't going to be the hardest thing I'd ever attempted. Thor alone required interdimensional diplomacy. Tony Stark would rather eat his own armor than submit to anyone. I'm not even sure where to begin with getting T'Challa away from the Panther Goddess Bast who would definitely fight me to the death to protect her champion no doubt believing me to be just another God out to steal her believes. Steve Rogers had principles forged in a world war that made him functionally allergic to the kind of authority I wielded divine right or not but again as long as he got Bucky it would work out one way or the other.
But those rewards. My God, those rewards.
I picked my fork back up and ate three consecutive bites of egg without tasting any of them, mind racing through logistics, timelines, approach vectors. Banner and Bucky were already in motion. Rogers would surface soon. Stark was public, traceable, approachable through corporate channels if I played Aegis Defense correctly. Barton was a S.H.I.E.L.D. asset, which meant I needed leverage or an extraction opportunity. Thor was arriving with Loki in roughly seventy days, which made him a possible battlefield recruitment. Pietro didn't exist yet as a powered individual maybe now that I think about it were the twins mutants or mutates here I'll have to find out later. Lang was still a petty thief in San Francisco. Rhodes was military, tied to Stark. And for the last three Walker no idea who this is but if he was a future Avenger he should be important right, Shostakov same situation as Walker never heard of him not once. Reynolds same as the two above I've never seen or heard of them in any of the Marvel movies, comics, cartoon shows or video games I've seen before I was reborn here but I didn't really keep up with the movies or comics so maybe their new characters that were introduced and I just wasn't aware of it.
I'd figure it out later either way worst case I'll see if I can buy the info from the shop.
One step at a time. Banner and Bucky first. Build momentum.
I was about to return to my mental list when the dining room door swung open and Flash Thompson walked in, backpack slung over one shoulder, hair gelled into aggressive perfection, wearing the kind of designer polo that screamed my parents have money and opinions about both that I bought for him no problem because my people get the best. He'd been smiling non-stop in a great mood since yesterday after all he was just promoted to Rank Two, all his hard work paid off not to say he'd stop working hard he knew just as fast as he was given his promotion I would take it back but I wasn't worried Flash wasn't the type to willingly let down his beloved god. He spotted the open chair next to Enji and dropped into it with the casual confidence of someone who had not yet fully internalized that the man beside him could incinerate a city block.
"Morning, big guy." Flash grabbed a piece of toast. "So what's it like? Being a superhero in your world? Like, do you guys have fans? Merch? Action figures?"
Enji blinked. The question was so profoundly mundane compared to everything he'd processed in the last twelve hours that it seemed to short-circuit his usual gravity. His tether flickered with bemusement.
"There are... fan clubs," Enji said slowly. "Rankings. National popularity polls. My agency sold merchandise, yes. My face was on energy drinks."
Flash's eyes went wide. "Energy drinks? That's sick. Were they any good?"
"They tasted like carbonated battery acid," Enji said with perfect seriousness. "I tried one because I had to never drank them again after."
Flash laughed, loud and genuine, and something in Enji's expression cracked just slightly. Not a smile, not quite, but a softening around the eyes that suggested the concept of being asked a normal question by a normal teenager was a novelty he hadn't known he needed.
Izuku appeared in the doorway, freshly dressed in the sleep wears good old sweatpants and sweatshirt that were in every room in multiple sizes unlike Enji who could barrow clothes from someone around his size with Alfred's help even if it was slightly to small no one here was near Izuku's 5,5 height so untill they can get those civilian clothes he's got deal with it. He hesitated when he saw the occupied table, then noticed the conversation and leaned in from across the table, elbows on the walnut, green eyes bright with the specific intensity of a boy who had spent his entire childhood cataloging hero data.
"Endeavor-san, what was one of your highest-ranked mission? The one that pushed your Quirk closest to its limit?"
Enji set his coffee down. The tether between us hummed as something old and guarded loosened in his chest. "There was a villain. sky master, from my early second decade of hero work. His power as you can imagine was whether manipulation he was all but untouchable for your average hero hard to counter. I was not supposed to engage seeing as I was almost useless with the sheer scale of the rain he had coming down at the time." A pause. "I engaged anyway."
"What happened?" Flash and Izuku asked simultaneously, then looked at each other with matching expressions of startled camaraderie.
"I exceeded my thermal output ceiling by approximately forty percent to get through all the water," Enji said. "I melted the pavement in a three-hundred-meter radius. The villain survived, but I had bought enough time for evacuation." He turned his hand over on the table, studying the palm where flame had lived for forty years. "I could not close my fist for two weeks afterward. The nerve damage was extensive."
Izuku's hand drifted unconsciously to his own right arm, where scars from One For All's backlash were long since faded under the Dawngleam's healing influence. The parallel wasn't lost on him.
"But now the bond helps you regulates your output," Izuku said softly. "You could push further without the burnout now right."
"That is the theory," Enji agreed. His eyes found mine across the table, and the look in them was not gratitude exactly but something adjacent to it, a bone-deep recognition that the cage he'd lived in his entire life had a door now and someone had handed him the key.
I held his gaze for a beat, let the warmth in the tether speak for me, then glanced at the clock on the wall. Six-forty. School started at eight-fifteen, and Manhattan traffic was Manhattan traffic even with Legion optimizing the route especially since I had to pick Peter up as well.
"Flash finish eating. Car leaves in twenty minutes." I stood, snagged the last piece of bacon, and let my mind snap back to the unfinished list.
Summon search teams for Banner. Green-light the Bucky extraction planning with William. Meet with Ray and Ronnie. Tactical briefing at four. Grind as many points as you can today.
Seventy-two days. Twelve Avengers. A million points waiting at the finish line.
I shrugged on my leather jacket, felt every golden tether in the mansion pulse in recognition, and started for the science divisions missing nerd and then headed for the war room where Jason was.