Discimer - All the owners have their respective rights. I only own the characters that came from my addled brain (don’t worry, I am pletely sober).

  New Delhi, India [April 18, 2011]

  –Jack Sullivan–

  “Ah, that’s the stuff,” He sighed tentedly, patting his full stomach as he looked at the massive pile of dishes that had piled up once he had started eating. Apparently, his appetite was being somewhat of a problem due to the sheer energy defi the food of the mortal world. Kamar-Taj had that problem sorted long ago as they were s their nutrients from mystically rich pces that were full of CHI, the life-giving force of the universe. The normal food that he was eating was way off when it came to his dietary requirements. Not to mention the processed crap that had found its way even into the most luxurious of hotels. One such 5-star hotel was the one where he was eating his food. He had found a ta New York who worked as some sort of Bck Market cierge, willing to provide any and all services in exge for money.

  It was for him because he had lots of moo spend because of all the drug busts he had made because even after giving away literal millions of dolrs in the span of weeks, he still had millions of dolrs of hard cash on him and the person did not mind taking it off his hands in exge for some top-notch services. Of course, that didn’t mean that the broker had gotten off scot-free. He had destroyed his base of operations from the inside and only stopped when the Brreed, on threat of death, to stop sve trade rings in his tacts. Human traffig of any sort was banned by him and thus, Broker, the single biggest ral party of the Bck Market in the USA stopped dealing in humans, giving a big blow to the human traffig rings. It didn’t help their cause when he gave all of their bosses a visit and killed the ones who were less than amenable, providing their rivals to take over their wealth and allowing them to pursue alternate means of business. That broker was the one who was also eating with him at the same table.

  Well, eating would be a bit of a stretch since all the Broker had touched during the hour-long biing session was a gss of water, and even then he didn’t drink it. The Broker had expressed i in having a face-to-face with him to discuss their future endeavours and what not to do sihe Broker did not want any frontation with him. He had obliged since he was ly worried about anything and even if the Broker did anything, well, he was just a portal away from the cold darkness of space.

  “What?” He finally asked Broker who was stantly staring at his face. Well, it was a face mask that was basically capable of moulding itself to his face, allowing him to eat and drink like a normal person.

  “I was thinking, just where is all that food going? You don’t look all that big to me,”

  “Ah,” He chuckled and then wagged his fingers, “Well, Broker-kun, if you must know, it is because my body needs very high energy to fun properly, and well, as you probably know, food isn’t all that nutritious these days, not to mentiooxins added iween,” He went on a tirade about the diminishing nutritional value of food as the output of agricultural activities tio increase expoially, even though it took more and more food to reach the same nutritional macros.

  “Alright, fine. You are passionate about food, I get it,” The Broker interrupted him and then leaned on the dining table.

  “What is your end goal?” The Broker waved away the waiters from their private dining table and ohe door was firmly closed with his bodyguards standing guard outside, he finally asked the question that must have been bugging him all this while.

  “Hmm? What do you mean by that?” He tilted his head to the side as he ate the absolutely delicious ice cream.

  “Don’t make a fool of me, now. Nobody gets that strong without some sort of goal in their mind. I have a few enhanced people in my employ and I know what sort of training aermination it takes for someoo reach the pinnacle of their power, even after having the best resources avaible.”

  He raised an eyebrow at the Broker and tio slowly eat his ice cream, all the while maintaining eye tact. He ehe way the BRoker sweated.

  After a while, he finally gave mer, “Look, you are a criminal. The lowest of the low. The only reason I am even talking with you is that you proved to be adaptable enough and stopped doing those awful trades. More than that, I don’t have anything to say to you and I don’t think you will want to know as well. Just stop doing human traffig of any sort and we’ll be fine. Of course, sexual assault of any kind is forbidden, as I have made clear many times, as is evident by your very dead former petitors.”

  “Y-Yes, Thank you for that again. Don’t worry, your will will be dohe Broker bowed at him and didn’t lift his head for a long time before finally looking as if he was hesitating to ask something.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the Russians, sir. Despite my warnings, they have some sort of shipment with girls inbound tomorrow. I don’t have the pull necessary to stop that as the order seemed to have e from high up. They are bypassing all the red tape and bringing ihing legally, somehow.”

  He leaned forward in i, “Any suspects?”

  “Aside from some rich fuck having pull with some senators? None. I don’t think it is them either because anising this would be very risky for anyone in the gover save for the CIA, maybe,” The Broker replied fearfully, carefully wiping the sweat from his forehead.

  “Alright, I’ll do it,”

  “Wh-what?”

  “That’s what you wanted me to dht? Take care of your petition. Why gh all these roundabout ways? They tried to do something that I expressly forbade in my city and they are going to pay for that. Simple as that. Anywho, I guess you got the bill? Take it out of the shipment of cash I give you. Bye now,” He waved at the Broker as he slid right into the portal that appeared beh him. He promptly found himself covered in his barriers, right in the middle of snowy nowhere. He never really went straight to his home or any of the pces that could ect ba without taking a stop first.

  He snapped his fingers and the moment, found himself buaked in the middle of snowy ada. It was a good thing he er soldier otherwise this would have been enough to give him frostbite. Then, the clothing came ba. That was a plete sanitatiohat removed everything except the things that had the owner’s DNA on them. It was fantastic for removing any bugs that others might have slipped into his food or water. It even removed microscopic bugs that were invisible to the eye.

  Tony really had e far with nanoteology because while the bugs were not quite at the nanoscale that Tony would make iure, they were much smaller thahe tech SHIELD had access to.

  “Hmm, Russians, huh? Well, they fucked around, now they will find out,” he muttered to himself before writing a note about getting the details of their shipments and flung it straight into a portal that led to a cave in the Middle East where another portal opened up which sent the o the Brokers’ mailbox that he had installed specifically for his requests. It was safe to say that the Broker was very much terrified of him and would do everything he could to stay on his good side and while it did disgust him at the beginning, to let him go despite knowing all the bad he had do was, in the end, a positive as he had gone on to bee the single biggest pyer iy, allowing him to create a very silent atmosphere in the criminal underbelly of New York. Well, that was his good deed for tomorrow decided. What should he do today? It was the weekend so he had taken a little break from his daily sky patrolling and he usually practised with the advanced applications of his powers on this day but he just didn’t feel like exhausting his mind to enable more and more plex applications of his powers. Creating an incredibly realistic Godzil and theing three more of them, while piloting them at the same time was his current limit and he felt that it should be enough, at least for the

  Chitauri.

  “Jack, get your little ass down here!” He snickered as Luke’s enraged voitered his loft. He had a great time tormenting Luke during his brief stay in Pops’ spare room and now that he had moved to his own pce, he felt as if he owed something to Luke, as a farewell gift.

  He went down and absolutely howled in ughter as Luke Cage, the Future Power Man, overall badass, was pletely covered in pink from head to toe with a paint that the Broker had assured him was extra hard to remove. He had employed the cssic bucket on top of the door and was rewarded with the absolutely mad face of Luke Cage.

  Finding out that Luke Cage did have his powers was a very simple matter as he had noticed gss shards that should have peed his skin, at least a little bit, just hitting him and falling down. His enhanced reflexes allowed him to see that even the ohat hit part of his face fell down all the same, firming that Luke Cage did have his powers at the moment and that realisation was both sad and delightful for him. Sad because it meant that Luke was now a fugitive and was on the run after being illegally experimented on and delighted because he was going to see the real live-a hero Luke Cage in a. After all, Luke Cage was actually bulletproof.

  He jumped above Luke’s outstretched hand as he tried to grab his colr and then after kig Luke’s shoulders for extra measure, he nded right in the shop, which was thankfully empty because, for some reason, the weekends were really slow in the evening.

  “Tada!” He presented himself like a circus performer and bowed to the sloing Pops who was trying to tain his ughter.

  “Take it off, Brat!” Luke shouted as he tried to, once agai him from behind. Well, he just ducked at the st moment and jumped back, straight into his stomach.

  “Oww!” He said as he stumbled back from hitting Luke’s iron stomach. He rubbed his forehead as it stung for a few moments before it healed pletely but he kept up the charade for a few more moments.

  “What are you made of, iron?” He asked Luke as he preteo be hurt. Suddenly, Luke got all flustered ahe shop in a hurry, pletely staining parts of the floor pink.

  He and Pops looked at each other and the pink stains on the ground and then vice versa a couple times before he sighed, shoulders drooping, “Fine, I’ll it,”

  “That’s more like it. e on, I have a er ing in around 8,”

  “Yeah yeah,”

  _____xx______

  Stark Tower

  –Tony Stark–

  “Sir, I believe that it would be safe to call it a success”

  “Uh-huh. Well, let’s just call it Mark I for now, shall we? It is still nowhere he strength of the real thing,”

  “Sir, we are already past the strength of six inches of steel at this point. Going any further will increase the strain that the Arc Reactor simply ot sustain,” Jarvis’ words only seemed to increase his determination.

  There was a small inspicuous-looking block of blue energy floating in front of them and that same small block of blue light was what he had been ser-focused on for the past week or so. It was a cheap imitation of the real thing.

  Jack’s barriers, even when he was not uber-powerful like he was now, were strohan anything he had ever seen in the world. The one in front of him, while not as strong, was capable of being projected from his suits without giving them any additional bulk. The Third Geion Arc Reactor was a y for them but just these barriers meant that he was now essentially capable of tanking evero of the ons the US Military had to offer, save for the nukes. He was somewhat certain that the shield could even take a few of the Hulk’s punches if need be.

  He was also doing some parallel resear the portals that Jack opened and aside from figuring out that he was creating stable wormholes with safe event horizons, he had not made any further inroads with that. It was uandable because figuring out instantaneous transport across even the p would be enough to guarantee even his death. Nothing would save him from that level of teology and in a way, he was gd that it was so inprehensibly difficult to achieve what Jack does with a wave of his hand because imagining terrorists getting their hands on such tech made his spine shiver. Being able to transport troops, resources, bombs, and more while ign distand time would be the only advahat any nation would need. It would mean that the cept of people being safe behind borders would bee a thing of the past.

  “I don’t think how much of a threat he has made of himself by showg his ability to create portals,” He muttered, mostly to himself as he thought about the threat ratings that the US Gover had assigo Jack. Ironically, his ability to create portals that turned him into the single biggest threat that the try had ever e across, also made it so that the gover finally stopped their efforts to tain him. They realised that trying to catch him would be a fool’s errand and if, perce he wanted revenge for doing so, it would take nothing more than a portal to their home with a greo give them a quick death. The alternative methods that had been proposed by some of the military analysts had been very creative in their methods of ways Jack could grant someone a very sloainful death. It ranged from exposing them to the extreme colds and thereme heat and then watg them die from shock or just leaving them in areme enviro.

  He had stopped reading after a while but it would seem that the US gover would not be b Jack for a while. They had even pced him above the Hulk as a threat.

  “Now, Jarvis, how close are we until the fen’s parts arrive here?” He asked Jarvis as he closed down every single s open in front of him with a wave of his hand. He had do. He had built a fen arc reactor. A rge arc reactor capable of creating so muergy that the ey of New York could double its annual ption and the reactor could still tio supply it with energy. He had used up all the vibranium he could find in the Bck Market but he had finally built the core that would never extinguish itself, a true unlimited energy reactor. Of course, the rest of the parts would need frequent rept, especially due to the excess energy c through them but the core of the reactor would stay the same for decades to e. Apparently, his father was trying to create an artificial rept for some element that was armingly closer to Vibranium.

  He had then attended a few bck market aus and then scooped up all the vibranium he could find, which amouo little over a kilogram. He used all of it to make that core and it was now the single most valuable thing he owned.

  Ohat Arc Reactor was installed in the building, the energy ption would be a negligible issue as the building would be able to shield itself from everything short of a thermonuclear on. Oh, he could not wait to surprise the flying Greeny with his shield.

  “A little over a week sir,”

  He closed his eyes as he began to doze off on the couearby, “Alright, wake me when Pepper’s home, will you, J?”

  “Alright, sir,” His eyelids felt heavy as he finally succumbed to sleep after over 30 hours of being awake.

  Word t - 2872

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