Chapter 146: CHAPTER 144
[Draul St. Cross POV]
Four months had already passed since the whole Asgardian debacle and I was glad that I didn't have to deal with their shit before I lost my patience with them and did what I would normally not do in such a situation.
It was currently March of 2005 and between me and anyone interested, nothing happened on Christmas day. Though I would not admit it, I already had a timer on countdown inside my brain, waiting until someone decided to run my fade.
Thankfully, both Christmas and New Year passed by peacefully without me having to almost or fully destroy an entire city.
The first thing I did after the New Year was give Ororo the location of Krakoa. That decision though might not have been so bright on my part as it turns out that the island apparently had something against me and Ororo due to the little stunt we pulled in the Pacific that one time.
I had left her alone with whatever group it was that she ended up forming together with Emma Frost and Raven Darkholme.
I didn't know how they ended up taking care of the island but I didn't care. All I did was just cut out a part of the island as my private property and before anyone could say anything, I had already teleported back to my house.
Raven and Emma had been pretty skeptical of my intentions and supposed help to them but a simple reminder that I could kill them and their little riffraff motley crew was everything they needed to stay out of my way.
I'm pretty sure they ended up hating me since I kinda trapped them in an illusion where I ripped out their hearts, but in my defense, they were being annoying.
I could have taken ownership of the island but I figured that it would end up being trouble and the only reason I took a piece of land was for a vacation with the others.
As it currently was, there was hardly any place we couldn't go on planet earth, even the restricted Antarctica was a portal away from our exploration.
I don't know how they would start developing Krakoa but I made it clear that I wanted no part of it. Heck, I didn't even want to have my name mentioned in whatever meeting they held regularly.
I had done the most that I could for them and the only thing I asked was land. A couple of acres and nothing more. Everyone at home had already decided that we would build the house ourselves when it was time. It was a bit too sentimental for my liking but I moved along with it.
Fury and I also had a few talks these last few months. He was pretty adamant about me being a part of S.H.I.E.L.D in one way or the other. A decision that none of those at the top favored, including me.
One of the first things I did when my satellites went fully functional was erasing all my information from any digital device on the planet, including the Wakandans. Turns out that they too keep an eye on the outside world every once in a while.
As long as the device that held my information could be plugged into a network, had Wi-Fi or even Bluetooth, they were all gone in the next 2 hours.
All the digital files that were related to me in any way, even those having a mention of my name, were gone. To the whole world, Draul St. Cross, the mutant, the Draugr, did not exist.
The only thing that existed was my former documents but even those were suspicious to anyone who looked at it for more than five seconds.
Oh sure they went through a fuss, even Fury had looked at me with blinded eyes but who cared? I for sure didn't.
It was a slap to their face that I knew what they were doing as I was able to even erase all the files they had on me inside the Pentagon, S.H.I.E.L.D and all the other organizations that had a whiff of who I was.
I had become something of a second Dr. Doom to them.
They finally backed off knowing fully well that with those satellites under my control, I could dig up the deepest darkest secrets they had that even they didn't know about. I could shut down a country's economy in a day if I wanted to.
It wasn't until I made that point clear to Fury that finally stopped trying their futile efforts to get in my way.
That aside, the second most important thing that happened this last year would be my relationship with Ororo.
If I was being perfectly honest with myself, I didn't even know when it was agreed that we had started dating, but I wasn't complaining though.
I liked her enough that I would willingly date her if I had the chance, which ironically I had. She was a bit of a tomboy but I was cool with that. Nat and Yelena were tomboys, mostly the latter.
I find it surprising why they actually cheered when I told them about dating Ororo. It was as if I was the old man in the room who finally found something precious.
We didn't rush into it, why would we?
My relationship with Ororo was a mix of her being my female best friend(Nat was like a younger sister to me at this point), my girlfriend and someone I could just chill with.
She's visited me on numerous occasions during these past few months and I also took the time to visit her at the Mansion when I was bored. I didn't do it that much though since I still didn't like Xavier.
Ororo knew that much so at least she wasn't trying to make us acknowledge each other.
All in all, I was content with what I currently had, both at home and with Ororo.
The most important thing that did happen to me was the Space Stone.
I might or might not have shattered the Tesseract which meant S.H.I.E.L.D has finally lost it.
Fury gave me an earful and a stink eye for that one but on whoever was Most High, I did not budge an inch. I denied ever knowing the existence of such an artifact and even if he didn't believe me, like at all, there was nothing he could do.
It all happened when I had finally figured how to teleport without having to open a portal. Unknowingly, I was overflowing with spatial energy from the stone that I had shattered the Tesseract, something like a spatial quake, due to exerting force on it because of my excitement.
I had learnt a lot while working with the Space Stone.
I could exert gravity on over 100 km without using the Space Stone and with it, well the entire North America would feel it. And that was being generous.
I also perfected my spatial barrier. To be honest it was the perfect defense against almost anything. Stacking a large distance of space into a 10 cm barrier, one able to stop almost any attacks as long as they couldn't cut through space. It made the attacks look like they stopped in front of someone when in reality they are moving though the distanced stacked, making it appear as if they stopped moving altogether.
I also learned how to phase. A bit tricky but I got the hang of it soon enough.
My experiments with Space Stone made me learn a few things like folding space and blasting it outwards, splicing it and a whole slew of other things like warping, area shifting, which was like exchanging the location of X and Y or interchanging them. Meaning I could exchange my location with a pebble 10 km away.
And I could finally fly without using any of my powers. To be honest it was much easier and had less restrictions than any other form of flying.
All these were things I could do as easily as breathing without the Space Stone. With the Space Stone, everything was magnified to at least on a continental scale. At the very least.
It still made me wonder how a stone could enable someone to do something like this.
I was at the point where I could use the Space Stone without any strain.
At my current strength, I felt like I could shatter the earth core with just the Space Stone and that wouldn't even be the hardest thing I could do.
Thanos with only one stone was considered the most powerful warrior across galaxies. But even then, he hadn't tapped into what the stones could really do.
Maybe it was because of his obsession, the fact that the only reason he cared for power was to erase half of all sentient life. If he had been someone like Doom… long story short, Dr. Victor Von Doom would have conquered the multiverse in its entirety.
It wasn't even such a hard thing for him to do. Two decades tops and he would have been on the same standing as the Abstracts Entities of the Marvel multiverse.
A shame I had to kill him though, otherwise I would be one of the few people actually rooting for him for the simple fact that it would be the most peaceful multiverse in any reality. Doom was that much of a competent leader.
Imagine the free time and life I could live.
Anyway, moving away from the thoughts of one of my few regrets since coming to this universe, the Space Stone was like a second part of me right now.
I was able to create small pocket spaces that I bounded with runes and added to my axe. I didn't have any particular reason for doing that other than the fact that I actually could.
I once tried a very risky experiment with the stone that if not for who I was, I would have died that instant.
It was something that came to mind after I perfected the spatial barrier.
I thought about what if I could hide between spaces, the void between the material plane and what was not.
What I felt was a fear that was so primal that I didn't touch the stone for two days.
I had mistakenly transported myself to somewhere that wasn't part of our known reality. The place had been so ominous that it encompassed whatever I have felt by a million folds and over.
Whatever was there, whether singular or numeral were so strong that I don't think having six stones would make any difference.
I had a feeling that they knew I was there even though I did not stay there for more than five seconds due to the initial fear that had gripped me and the flight mentality that had taken over when I saw an assured death.
Even till now, I was still wary about stepping into the space between realities. I did not think that the Space Stone would be able to even bring me to somewhere like that.
Due to my adaptation with the Space Stone, I was able to know instinctively that that place was not part of the known universe or any pocket dimension within it.
I was thankful that they didn't attack me the moment I appeared there because I was completely sure that they knew.
It felt as if eyes were everywhere and it even grew on my body and was blinking at me as if I was a part of it, or rather it was a part of me.
My brain had taken the most part of the next day, even with my absolute(well not anymore) control over my emotions, to help me come to terms with the fear I felt.
Whatever type of entities that resided there absolutely could not be let into any universe.
As someone who could use the Space Stone anyhow he currently wished, I knew that whatever that dimension was, it was definitely bigger than this universe. Way bigger. Having the Space Stone in one's possession erased the concept of distance, direction and space within the universe.
But I felt like I was blind when I warped in there. It felt truly endless. It felt like space didn't exist there.
'Just another day in the Marvel multiverse.'
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