Technomancer in MCU #119 (Patreon)

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Chapter 119

Technomancer in MCU

Royal Palace, Asgard

–Ed–

So, here they were. 

The stage was set. Alfred had done something to himself that helped him recover completely out of nowhere. He had tried his utmost to hide it but the subtle blue glow around his eyes completely gave him away. The bastard had actually done it. He had gone ahead with his half-baked ideas and actually managed to create an Arc reactor that housed the Space Stone, culminating in a reactor with the highest possible output, Infinity.

Somehow, that same procedure helped Alfred easily heal TOby as well, bringing both of them back from the brink of exhaustion. In fact, he could feel Toby’s soul just burning with excess energy. It was nearly vibrating due to the extra energy it was housing. Toby must have done that in preparation for the ritual where his soul was the one that was going to be taxed the most. After all, Toby was the one who was going to actually handle moving his soul. Alfred was the one who was going to instruct him every microsecond.

Frigga and Odin were just supposed to be guardians but with the addition of the Infinity Stones, Alfred had managed to raise the success probability of the ritual to above 90 percent. All Odin and Frigga had to do, aside from maintaining the barrier around the ritual room and powering it with the Odin Force, was use the gathered energies from all of the Infinity Stones that they had ever encountered and use it to gently “steer” the ritual to the ideal eventuality.

Frigga and Odin were being educated on the specifics of the ritual by Alfred and Toby was..

He looked at the giant ball of burning darkness floating just out of Asgard’s atmosphere. Toby had gone into some sort of demon meditation mode and was focusing on the details of the ritual that Alfred had just dumped into his head. A normal human or even an enhanced human would most probably have been dead from that but Toby was far from normal even if his intellect left something to be desired.

Frank and Daisy, along with both of their respective teams had landed on Asgard a while back and were busy coordinating with the ground forces of Asgard along with establishing a chain of command for the upcoming battle. The forces of Asgard were still unaware of the relationship between Hela and Odin but Odin had warned them about their foe somewhat correctly. For one, Hela’s abilities were correctly reported to his commanders as well as the fact that she grows stronger as the time she spends on Asgard increases.

Their commanders were particularly incensed once they were told that while they did have the means to kill Hela completely, once and for all, they were supposed to not do that. They were supposed to throw their lives on the line again and again until an undisclosed milestone was met, all the while Hela grew stronger and stronger.

Those same commanders had shut up with their complaints once they were made aware of the reason behind the complete evacuation of Asgard. Also, the huge fleet that blotted out the sky behind the Royal Palace also may have played a part in it. Alfred had pulled out all the stops for this, as was evident by the dozens of supercarriers that absolutely dwarfed even the entire realm of Asgard. It was honestly concerning thinking about the huge weaponry that had been built by his organisation, behind his back. If he survived this, he was going to have to have a one-on-one with Alfred about boundaries of some sort. He knew that Alfred had already surpassed the level where he could actually instill some boundaries in him but as his creator and leader of the Ascendancy, he still had some responsibility in that regard.

The moon base had been completely filled with the evacuated members of the family of all of his agents. Since everything that had been happening was not common knowledge, even in the Ascendancy, all of his agents had been spooked about the massive movement within the organisation and had all but demanded the safety of their families, at the very least. HE agreed with them wholeheartedly and thus, their families were now housed in the strongest place he had ever built.

The Moon Base.

He had never known that there were levels to places in the universe. It was not completely arbitrary but there were certain criteria that you had to fulfill if the place wanted to be certified. If he went by the publicly available information, it would mean that his Moon Base was a level 6 stronghold, which was hilarious because he had made that base very early in his quest for Thanos’ demise. He had gone on to upgrade it every opportunity he got but the fact that he had a place where even the strongest of the non-celestials of the universe would have a hard time getting into, was a relief for the agents. Of Course, once you added the Infinity Stones, everything went up for toss but he had calculated for that eventuality as well.

As of this moment, right underneath the Moon Base, there was a vault, filled with vibranium ingots that had absorbed the energy of three different Infinity Stones. 

The Mind Stone.

The Space Stone.

The Time Stone.

The three stones that Alfred had spent a prolonged time with. They had built up a sizable inventory of it and due to that energy, Alfred was able to bring to life, something that he had only theorised about. A way to stop Thanos even if he assaulted the place with the Infinity Gauntlet.

See, he had finally gotten the answer to a question that had plagued him for a long time. If the Infinity Stones, if slotted into the Gauntlet, posed no harm to the user if the user was strong enough, why did Thanos not use all six or at least multiple stones in conjunction to just straight up remove all the thorns in his way?

The answer was that he just couldn’t. In all of his memories, the only time that Thanos used three or more Infinity Stones at once was when he killed half of the universe. That meant that he couldn't use multiple stones at once without repercussions. Exploiting that fact, Alfred had come up with a barrier system for the base that used the energies from the Infinity Stone ingots to repel whatever attack that Thanos could throw at it. It had a system built in which could detect whatever energy was being used against it and decide which energy to use to repel it, making it very useful for defending against attacks from beings empowered with the energies of an Infinity Stone. 

Alfred had tested it against the might of the Time Stone that the Ancient One wielded at that time and the system did hold itself against all the Time Stone attacks that the Ancient One threw at it but eventually, the system wore itself down because of the scarcity of the energy they had at that time. Not now, though. According to Alfred’s calculations, they had enough energy to last even a week of continuous siege.

Hopefully, they never need that though.

He turned around once he heard the noise of the repulsor jets though that was probably for his own benefit anyway. From what he knew of Stark, he had probably already developed multiple iterations of the repulsor systems which were completely stealthy.

Two suits, of red and gold and muted green colours landed gently in front of him and opened up to reveal the forms of one Tony Stark, pain in his ass, and Bruce Banner, the avatar of Rage. 

Stark, as usual, started with a snarky comment, “So, Ed, what’s with all the party preparations? I am hurt you chose not to invite me. Bruce was pretty bummed too,”

“Um, I, uh, have no part in this whatsoever,” Bruce stammered out, causing Tony to give him a betrayed look.

He chuckled, amused by Tony’s antics that he never stopped, despite the seriousness of the situation, “So, what can I do for you, Stark?”

Tony’s smile dropped as he started looking around shiftily for some reason. He then went back to the suit and pressed a few buttons, causing the suit to dissolve into a puddle of nanites. Well, not completely but most of the suit dissolved into nanites, leaving behind a core rectangular shell made up of solid metals. So, that's the route Tony had taken at the moment. Tony had used the nanites part of his suit to increase its versatility while creating a solid core that does not compromise on the strength and safety of the suit.

“Nanites not strong enough, yet?” He piped in between whatever Tony was doing. Tony paused in his actions, clearly surprised at that. Bruce also gave him a surprised look.

He snorted, “I was the one who made Alfred, remember? Ergo, I can be partially credited for everything that he made,”

Tony gained a thoughtful look at that and then raised his thumbs at him, “Fair enough.”

He sighed, “What do you want Stark?”

“Just a moment,” Stark said as he continued to fiddle with the core of his suit.

“Alright, almost done. There, finished,” Tony continued to mutter as the core of the suit flew into the air right above him and then projected a barrier around the three of them. Judging by the absolute silence that permeated the barrier, a complete departure from the heavy sounds of the military being gathered, Tony wanted to say something in private.

He opened his mouth to speak when suddenly he realised something, causing him to close his mouth with an audible click. His eyes widened in horror and genuine awe when he looked at the barrier and then at Tony.

“What? Look, I'm flattered but I don’t swing that way,” Tony, the absolutely genius bastard that he was, said.

He just deadpanned at him and even then, the awe could not be taken out of his voice as he said, “What did you just do, Stark? I can’t even feel the links made with magic and that was supposed to be nearly–”

“Impossible? Inconceivable? Yes, keep the praises coming. After all, I have made a barrier to stop something that could not even be detected by even the most advanced of sensors that I could make. So, yes, it is an–”

“Fluke,” Bruce deadpanned.

Tony choked, “Wh-What?”

He chuckled at their antics. It was nice that Bruce had opened up to Tony and gotten comfortable enough. It would certainly help with the Hulk down the line.

Now though, he looked at Tony seriously, “What is it, Tony?”

Tony sighed and ran his hand through his hair, a nervous tick that Alfred had observed numerous times, “Do you know about a surgeon named Stephen Strange back home?” 

He raised an eyebrow at that. He most certainly did but the question was that how did Tony get involved with Stephen.

“I do. He is one of the people we monitor for special reasons that you are not qualified to know,”

Tony’s face flashed through a multitude of emotions. Disappointment was one of them, for some reason.

“So, you condone what Alfred did to him?” 

“What? Speak clearly, Stark.”

“Fine, here is what your precious AI did to a promising surgeon who was at the top of his career. Stephen Strange was using the website of AlfredGPT when…..”

As Stark continued to narrate the harrowing tale of Strange being in an accident and Alfred actually mocking him for that accident on top of actually causing said accident, his eyes widened more and more in horror. He could not believe Alfred would go that far in his quest to safeguard Humanity.

Sure, he had emphasised it time and time again to help humans and he was sure that Alfred worked on a different moral scale than most humans, due to who he was fundamentally but this..this was going too far.

“Do you have any proof?” He asked Tony, controlling the raging emotions within him.

“Just call Alfred and ask him. I am sure that he would not lie to you,” Bruce chimed in. Tony nodded as well.

But what could they accomplish even if he did call in Alfred? All of this would only matter if he had any capacity to actually do anything. Right now, he was even worse than a cripple. Even his life and death were in the hands of someone else right now. Whatever Alfred had done, he must have done so with solid reasoning. That didn’t make it okay but more likely than not, Toby would agree with Alfred’s reasons. So would Odin and Frigga and Loki and Thor.

He had no one who could contend with Alfred aside from himself and that was just a what-if in the future.

HE sighed, all this being dumped at the worst possible moment, was taking its toll on him. “Look, Stark. Your concerns are valid and if they are true, I promise you that I will take action against Alfred for it. It’s just that, to actually do something, I would need the power to do so. As I am right now,--”

“--You are completely crippled, I get it. I have seen the scans that Frank gave to us. Alright, I get it. We’ll complete this procedure and then we’ll talk. Deal?”

He shook Tony’s offered hand, “Deal.”

Tony’s eyes then lost that serious look as he started rubbing his hands in excitement, “So, who is this mystery foe against whom I can test any and all of my weapons? I have literally brought in enough weapons to destroy a small country and they tell me that even that won’t be enough?”

And just like that, Tony Stark was back to being the overexcited man-child that everyone thought he was and yet, he knew. Looking at the wariness hidden behind the facade of excitement, he knew that STark was very much worried about the upcoming foe and even more than that, worried about Alfred should they win the fight against Hela.

Word Count - 2396