章 2301: Chapter 1558 The Pursuit of the Sun (19)_1
"How did the Hulk come out?!"
A frustrated roar echoed across the New York City skyline.
Adam stood on the rooftop of the Stark Building, his forehead in his hands as he watched the green giant speeding past below, followed by dozens of Spider-Men. He simply could not understand how things had escalated to this point.
Due to Adam's presence and high-ranking stature, he was very potent in this universe and seemingly had control over almost anything. Still, two of the variables that eluded his control, were Shiller and Hulk.
While Hulk didn't vex him as much as Shiller, having Hulk show up whilst wrestling with Shiller's problem was undeniably catastrophic.
Adam wanted to stop the Hulk, but recalled that he had been spotted by Spider-Man previously. If he moved in again and was recognised by the Spider-Men, the situation could turn unfavorable should they report to Shiller.
He decided that the best course of action would be to lever the original timeline to rectify the current chaotic narrative - a new idea sparked by this programmer to fix the "bug".
By leveraging the original timeline, he meant exploiting Hulk's original adversary, preferably one that had posed significant challenges to Hulk in the past, defeat him convincingly and revert him back to Dr. Bruce Banner.
Adam's first thought was the HulkBuster Armor. Although Stark's armors had a track record of being overwhelmed by whatever they were designed to counter, things might be different with Adam's assistance.
Adam chose this option because the seemingly thoughtless armor seemed more dependable compared to the unpredictable nature of humans.
Adam immediately headed into the Stark Building. The surveillance systems of the Stark Building certainly didn't hinder him, and he moved within the storage area of Stark's armor freely. Unfortunately, after searching tirelessly he was unable to locate the HulkBuster project.
In this world, Dr. Bruce Banner received timely psychological intervention, counseled conjointly by Charles and Shiller. Shiller even devised a method for Hulk to vent his rage into the cosmos, reducing Hulk's air-time significantly and thus eliminating the need for Stark to counter Hulk.
Adam turned his thoughts to the Abomination, but when complying with the timeline, he realized that the Abomination was KGB, and he had absolutely no interest in dealing with them anymore.
So finally, he sought help from Hulk's old nemesis, General Ross, who was still attempting to capture the Hulk.
Adam quickly found General Ross, not at the New York Air Force base, but at his home, infuriated and plotting to face-off with Dr. Bruce Banner.
The reason being that Betty, his daughter, who was mourning her confrontation with Dr. Bruce Banner, had ignored Ross's calls, compelling him to rush back home, only to be met with silent treatment.
An enraged Ross grabbed his keys and stormed out of the house to head to Dr. Bruce Banner's laboratory, that's when Adam suddenly appeared in his car.
"Screech-"
The shrill noise of the brakes sounded off, as Ross whipped his head towards Adam, tightly gripping the gun in his hand.
In the blink of an eye, the hatred for Hulk and the anger towards Bruce Banner for disappointing his daughter dominated Ross. He turned the car around to head back to the Air Force base.
The creation of Hulk through gamma ray experimentation was no secret within the military. Aiming to create a larger bomb, they couldn't pass up the opportunity and had prepared a gamma radiation machine at a lab in New Mexico, ready to mass produce Hulks as a last resort.
Under Adam's influence, Ross was well aware of this plan. He returned to the Air Force base, obtained a pass to the New Mexico lab in the guise of an inspection, and then Adam opened up a portal for him, allowing him to reach the lab in the shortest time possible.
There, he successfully turned himself into Hulk's enemy, the Red Giant, using gamma rays. As the Red Giant emerged from the radiation light, Adam was verging on tears of gratitude. Finally, his speed-play strategy was seemingly successful.
The Red Giant too flaunts formidable strength and jumping abilities, allowing him to reach the Earth's orbit with one leap, so he quickly jumped back to New York, where he successfully confronted the Green Giant. The two giants, red and green, began to brawl within New York City.
Overlooking the situation from the rooftop, Adam breathed a sigh of relief. However, as he continued observing, he sensed something was amiss- The Red Giant seemed to be losing to Hulk.
In many instances, the Red Giant could prevail over the Green Giant in combat because he fought with reason and intelligence while Hulk was controlled solely by raw anger. Even with the added interference of Spider-Man, the situation should be completely one-sided in favor of the Red Giant. Yet the reality seemed to be the opposite.
Below, the Green Giant was practically slaughtering his opponents. The Spider-Men could only provide distractions without being able to subdue him due to their lightweight, and were easily flung away by Hulk.
The clever Spider-Men attempted to secure themselves to the ground using their sticky webs. Still, the Green Giant had an easy remedy, he simply uprooted the ground and hurled it away. After half an hour of battle, Hulk was tossing the Spider-Men around like a clown juggling balls in a circus.
The Red Giant, who Adam had high hopes for, was even more disappointing. He was originally able to gain the upper hand in his fight against the Hulk through intelligence and tactical knowledge, by often tricking the Hulk in his anger. But when Adam created the Red Giant, he used Ross's hatred for the Hulk, so now the Red Giant was even angrier than the Hulk, fighting with zero style and throwing rapid punches.
Adam, standing on the rooftop, was on the verge of a meltdown, as he hurriedly said into the Red Giant's ear, "Wake up, wake up, stop swinging your fists around, use the terrain to your advantage! Kick him!"
At this moment, another horrible news arrived, the Oblivion Messenger Lan's voice sounded in Adam's ear.
"I can't hold them back any longer! If I don't release the magical powers, Shiller plans on having Strange make a pact with me, for me to become his Pope..."
Adam shuddered; he was just thinking about keeping Strange from broadcasting the fight in New York, but now realized that switching to another location might be even worse.
Peter was currently beating up Reed Richards. That's right, a world spectacle was taking place in the lab—Spider-Man was hitting someone.
The extent to which Reed Richards deserved a beating had completely surpassed Spider-Man's moral bottom line, forcing a virtuous role model who only danced on the streets when contaminated by evil, to punch someone. There was no precedent for this, nor likely any to come.
Would Adam let Shiller see this?
Look at Nick Fury; he was as dark as ever. However, after being knocked down by Natasha and taken to a safe house, he immediately contacted Sharon Carter, a member of the Sky Sword Bureau he had developed, and through Agent Carter, he got in touch with Captain America, Steve, to rescue Nick from the safe house.
Nick, using the power of the Sky Sword Bureau, found out that it was the chairman of the Roxon Corporation who had ordered his assassination. He believed there was likely a mysterious organization behind the chairman, which had manufactured the terrifying assassin capable of evading multiple surveillance attempts.
Nick Fury, whose life was genuinely threatened, wasn't one to take things lying down. He dumped all the dirt S.H.I.E.L.D. had gathered on the Roxon Corporation over the years.
The most eye-catching piece of information was that the Roxon Corporation had bribed multiple media outlets to smear Spider-Man. Instantly, this news overtook that of Hulk's rampage in New York, and within a few hours, topped the headlines of various programs in New York.
The topic of Spider-Man topped the list of trending keywords again. Every major online media and print newspaper re-analyzed all the news about Spider-Man, causing a shocking reversal in public opinion.
Anyone with media industry experience would know that the more dramatic the reversal, the more newsworthy an event becomes, whether it's from bad to good or good to bad.
The reason Spider-Man's public opinion was so bad initially was because he was portrayed as a good person to begin with, but the media had to portray him as a villain to get traffic. Now, the same reversal process applies.
As much as they defamed Spider-Man before, they had to portray him positively now. It started with a host of hindsight geniuses pointing out the glaring flaws in the smear campaigns against Spider-Man, followed by neutral parties asserting their opposition to certain views years ago, claiming they went unnoticed because of a conspiracy.
Then came the onslaught of race and gender rhetoric, inventing stories about Spider-Man's origins, insisting that Spider-Man was undergoing this persecution because he was one of their own, then a host of media outlets reposted these, reflecting whether society had lost its moral compass.
Finally, newspapers, desperate for a piece of the action, unhappy that they missed out on the heat, began to produce their reversal of the reversal, claiming that Spider-Man was really a bad person and all the media were manipulated by the Stark Group to whitewash him. This led to another round of reversals, followed by yet another, creating an endless cycle.
No matter what, Spider-Man's terrible public opinion rating finally made a dramatic turnaround. News flow like water, but what was left in the minds of the people was the initial explosive news that all the black marks against Spider-Man were actually a deliberate smear by the Roxon Corporation.
In just half a day, Spider-Man's reputation had recovered at least 80%, and he was once again regarded as a good neighbor in New York.
Adam took a look at Shiller's plan, it's going exactly as planned. The process wasn't even close.
If Shiller were to see this, wouldn't it just be impossible?
Adam then turned his attention to Stark. The Iron Demon God and the King of Brightness were fighting from place to place. The places they passed by were full of merriment and crowds. Without even looking, he knew that Shiller's plan for next season's member gifts was a total waste.
Just as Adam was hesitating on where to ask Strange to switch the camera to, Lan's voice came again, "Magic has been lifted. The Supreme Magician's first target is New York."
Without hesitation, Adam instantly disappeared, swiftly retreating like his backside was on fire.
Once Strange's Magic Screen was up, Shiller saw Chang Wei fighting against Lau Fu. These two figures in red and green looked really familiar, didn't they?
Of course, Shiller was thinking not of the reality he was in, but of the comics in his mind. Wasn't this the Hulk's red and green battle?
After a moment of shock, he relaxed and turned to Strange, "Are you trying to show me the excitement of another universe to ease my mood?"
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