"Happy's overexcited right now, and Tony's anxious..." Pepper sighed. Only the two women were in the elevator. Pepper Potts looked worried. She was deeply concerned about Tony Stark's health. To her, Stark seemed to be working as though his life depended on it, and she had no idea where this sudden sense of urgency had come from.
Pepper had quietly observed them for a long time and was now certain there was nothing between Daisy and Stark. The two of them could not produce a romantic spark if they tried, which reassured her. As they entered the conference room, she asked Daisy to persuade Stark to stop pushing himself so hard.
"I'll try, but don't expect too much." Daisy sounded far from confident.
Perhaps to leave herself an out, or perhaps simply as a way to express her feelings, Pepper also owned shares in Stark Industries. It was not a large stake, but it was enough to attend the board meeting.
The shareholders had reached the point of blind faith in Tony Stark's technology. Many of them did not understand the Arc Reactor at all, but they could understand the concept of clean energy.
Several shareholders who had previously shouted about withdrawing their investments immediately calmed down. Even a fool knew energy was where the biggest money was. Leaving now would be idiotic.
They interpreted Stark's earlier cooperation with the government as an attempt to build goodwill. With the city in ruins, this was the perfect time to lay new pipelines. Once the reactors were complete and New York returned to normal, each of them could see their net worth multiply several times over—perhaps even tenfold.
The shareholders praised Stark's vision one after another.
"Tony, what will you do if another battle like this hits New York?" Daisy was deeply pessimistic about the city's future.
"I won't let something like that happen again." Stark's voice was low, as though he were holding back a volcano. Daisy and Pepper exchanged a look. Both could see that something was clearly wrong with him.
After thinking for a moment, Daisy still warned him. "Roxxon Energy Corporation has dominated the energy sector for years. Stark Industries' connections are mostly in weapons and mechanical manufacturing. You need to handle your relationship with Roxxon carefully."
Stark was somewhat idealistic, but years of exposure to business had given him good instincts. He naturally understood what Daisy meant.
It was like the medical industry. If people were willing to pay for treatment, why completely cure a disease? Existing energy sources already worked, so why provide people with something safer, more efficient, and cheaper?
Those who benefited from the existing system had no desire to see their monopoly broken. To protect their interests, they were capable of anything.
Not every technological upgrade succeeded. Sometimes an improved product made the people who introduced it pay in blood.
The Royal Navy had always been famous for embracing new technology. It developed humanity's first dreadnought. And what happened? The great powers immediately launched an arms race, making older battleships obsolete. Who had owned the most battleships before that? The Royal Navy. Britain had thrown away its own advantage and forced itself to compete with everyone on equal terms, eventually losing its position as the world's dominant power.
Americans had laughed about that for nearly a century.
The story of Tesla and Edison was even more widely known. Better technology did not necessarily win.
Stark nodded to show that he understood. Reality soon proved, however, that some people truly were insane. For the sake of their interests, there was nothing they would not do.
On the third day after Stark Industries announced its clean-energy initiative—the sixtieth day after the Battle of New York—another incident occurred that made President Obama feel his stomach drop.
The citizens of New Orleans had gone mad.
That was not a figure of speech. They had literally gone mad. Countless citizens moved sluggishly like zombies out of Resident Evil. Men and women wandered the streets, and the entire city abruptly lost contact with the outside world. If satellites had not captured the strange conditions inside the city, no one would even have known that something terrible had happened in New Orleans.
Every Avenger except Stark was away for one reason or another, so the mission of maintaining world peace automatically fell to S.H.I.E.L.D.
"This isn't some kind of zombie outbreak. There seems to be a hallucinogenic substance in the air. The concentration of the unknown material is already decreasing. If we contain the source, ordinary people should recover their senses within twelve hours." Simmons, Fitz's girlfriend and a biologist, spoke after analyzing air samples from New Orleans.
It was obvious that she was doing her best to explain things clearly without letting her nervousness show.
"But... but our drones detected eleven energy nodes inside the city. Those nodes are releasing the unknown substance. If we don't contain them immediately, the entire Gulf Coast could be affected." Fitz added his own assessment.
In short, it was serious. Extremely serious.
"What is releasing the hallucinogenic gas?" Nick Fury could not understand many of the instruments in the laboratory, but he still asked the most important question.
"Roxxon Energy Corporation's pipelines. They claim they've discovered a new energy source more valuable than petroleum..." Daisy gave Stark an irritated look. This was all because he had pushed Roxxon into desperation. Without understanding what they were dealing with, the company had taken a reckless gamble on extracting a new energy source.
This was part of Cloak and Dagger's storyline. The television version had been vague about the details, but there was no new energy source beneath New Orleans at all. What lay underground was an artifact.
The Serpent Crown.
It was a signal receiver that the Elder God Set had scattered across countless parallel worlds. Whoever wore the crown would become a vessel for the evil god. It was unmistakably an evil artifact.
Roxxon Energy Corporation's so-called new energy was merely power that had leaked from the crown after it had been sealed away for many years. They dug deeper and deeper until they finally broke through the old seal. Now the power of the evil god's artifact had begun leaking out. For ordinary people, this was already an extremely serious disaster.
Set was not especially powerful by multiversal standards. The Serpent Crown was like his calling card: whenever he encountered another parallel universe, he threw one in.
Reed Richards had once used absurdly advanced technology to pull 777 Serpent Crowns out of the entire multiverse. There had been enough of them to form a mountain.
It might not sound impressive, but the thing was actually quite formidable. Ancient Earth's sorcerers had gone to considerable trouble to seal the crown.
In the original timeline, the person who obtained the Serpent Crown was none other than Viper. Because of it, she formally gained the title Madame Hydra. Viper was cunning, however. Once she sensed something was wrong, she passed the crown to someone else, abandoned the title, and went back to simply being Viper.
"I'll go with you." Stark volunteered, but Daisy talked him out of it.
"They're all ordinary civilians. The fact that they were all affected instantly is actually a good thing. There hasn't been any bloodshed yet. Once we stop the energy leak, the situation will settle down. How long has it been since you slept properly? I'll handle this. Go home and get some rest."
If two teenagers like Dagger and Cloak could resolve the problem, handling it herself would be even easier.