Capítulo 26: **Chapter 26**
God, I could kiss Bruce, at least if it wouldn't cause him to punch me through a few walls. The contacts combined with Wolverine 2.0 just made life so much better that I almost hated remembering it before them.
Augmented Reality was amazing. Having a full, hi-definition, record of everything you saw and heard wasn't quite as good as a photographic memory but it was close. And that was the least of the benefits. I now had an honest to god video game people tracking radar and mini-map floating in my vision, and courtesy of my access to the various social media platforms Raith Industries owned along with the various government databases I even got to run facial recognition in real time and get little name tags floating above their heads. Using a computer? I got to use my entire field of view as a screen, or whichever bit I wanted and could type on thin air or pull off the Tony Stark hologram manipulation from the movies (even if only I could see it).
Business meetings? I had the data literally floating before my eyes and thus looked massively more prepared and competent than I really was. Not to mention the vocal stress and visual analysis programs that ran in real time and gave me a good idea when people were lying.
This set up had freed up an average of twelve hours per week from my schedule simply because I was always effectively sitting at a computer and could instantly respond to things like e-mails while doing other, more important, stuff.
Then there was the Chi release system which allowed me to steadily and continuously be bathed in neutral chi. Sleep? That was nice but now mostly unnecessary. Physical endurance? Not quite limitless bu close. Healing? A cut would be gone in minutes.
It was thanks to this system that I got an instant alert when a Chinese reactor caught on fire while I was in the middle of a business dinner. A subtle finger twitch and blink combination and suddenly my cell phone was ringing, a glance at the screen and I said "I'm sorry but I have to take this Obadiah, it should only take a minute though." as I excused myself from the table where I had been in talks with Obadiah Stane about our joint push to get the laws regarding genetically modified organisms changed.
"Of course Octavian. Believe me, I understand what it is like always being on call." he said as he stood and pulled out a cigar, "I'll be in the smoking lounge when you're done."
I gave a nod before answering the phone and leaving. Pretending to hold a conversation with one of my executives as I made my way to the restroom. Once in a stall I closed the door, opened a portal, and stepped through to Mars before grabbing a foot long, six inch wide, metallic canister, typing a few commands in thin air, opening a portal to the vicinity of the decommissioned - and currently flaming - Wan Tai nuclear reactor in China, and pushing through the canister before closing the portal.
From that canister emerged hundreds of bird sized drones which each contained hundreds of far smaller fly drones. They started flying around the area and deployed a fly to follow everyone within a twenty mile vicinity even as I was stepping back out of the bathroom stall and heading out to finish my conversation with Stane.
All my notes, made low those many eons ago when I first realized what universe I had been reborn into, said was that Scorch got his powers by being in the vicinity of a flaming nuclear reactor in China. Thankfully flaming nuclear reactors were not a common occurrence, in fact, this was the first one in more than a decade. My solution to finding Scorch was just to have spy drones follow around everyone in the area until whenever I did find him, with Arc Reactors those drones could last effectively forever and once the bugs target had been identified it would follow them regardless of where they went.
I had just gotten back from my dinner and was looking forward to relaxing with Natasha, we were both so busy and with such odd hours that having unscheduled downtime was a relatively rare occasion and it was nice to curl up with a good book and read with her sitting next to me as she read her own book. Just being able to sit in quiet peace with someone else without having to worry about anything was nice. And god was my life fucked up if I thought that was a nice way to spend time with a beautiful woman.
Sadly it was not to be as Elektra sent me a message saying that she needed a portal to Mars. I locked onto the tracking spell that was part of the enchanted communications relay inside her own Wolverine 2.0 upgrades and opened the portal. I noted that it was her meditation chamber in her quarters at Wolfram & Heart and a quick time check showed that it was 3 AM EST. She came through immediately, clearly agitated, and barely before the portal had finished closing she started speaking "I know what the Hand are after."
I rocked back on my heels slightly and said: "So you managed to access your progenitor's memories then?"
"Yes, finally. But it is almost seven thousand years of memories. Thankfully Chi doesn't forget, unfortunately, I need to view them before they become really part of my Chi in some fundamental way that I don't understand. Once I do that I can access the memories just like they were my own but until I do, nothing." she explained, before saying "But that's not the point. Dragons are real!"
I nodded "I'm aware."
She looked stunned as she said "WHAT?!"
"I'm aware that dragons are real. The Iron Fist becomes the Iron Fist by punching the molten heart of a dragon, after all, I believe its name is Shou-Lao." I calmly explained.
"Ok...why have you never mentioned this before?" she questioned.
I shrugged "It never really seemed all that relevant."
She sighed and muttered something about idiot men and dragons being real being important before speaking more clearly "Well it is, relevant that is. The Hand's resurrection substance is made from the bones of dead dragons and they are running low. They believe there is a dragon skeleton somewhere deep under New York City and that is what they are searching for."
I gave a nod "It's locked in a vault forty stories underground that only the Iron Fist can access; given that he never leaves K'un-Lun and would never help the Hand even if he did come to New York, I consider it quite secure. Shame for the Fingers that they don't know about the Vault though, all those resources they will waste digging for bones they can't access."
"YOU KNEW?! And didn't SAY ANYTHING?" she screamed out, fury lacing her voice.
I sighed, cast a quick spell around the both of us, and then opened a portal to the L1 Lagrange point and pushed her through.
With a few finger twitches, I manipulated the spells around us so that we were both facing Earth.
The sudden shock of being in the vacuum of space without an environment suit, and of not being dead (thank you magic), derailed her anger long enough for me to start speaking.
"Look at it Elektra. Earth, it looks beautiful from out here and I consider this one of the true privileges of being me. But the power I have comes with costs."
I glanced over at her before saying "Imagine that you are walking down the streets of New York tomorrow and see an out of control bus come barreling around a corner and about to crash into a building. You are in your armor so you have no risk to your identity and could easily stop it, saving the lives of the ten people on board. Will you do so?"
"What's that got to do with anything Raith?" she said
'ouch, using the last name, yup, she is definitely pissed.'
"We will get to that, but please answer the question." I calmly said.
"Fine, of course, I stop it." she ground out.
"And suppose that you also knew that one of the ten people on that bus is a terrorist who is going to blow himself up in a crowd the next day and kill a hundred people. What do you do then?" I continued.
"Assuming I can't just kill the terrorist, I let the bus crash. Sacrificing ten to save one hundred is the right call." she said promptly, her moral pragmatism shining through.
"Ah, but what if you knew that as a result of that terrorist attack a man would be gifted with great power and go on to save the world years later?" I said, finishing the hypothetical.
"I save the bus and let the terrorist attack occur, it's the same as above. All else being equal, you do what saves the largest number of people. What's this have to do with anything?" she said, the anger slowly coming back.
"It has everything to do with my life Elektra. It's probably the reason that Alkasha and I get along with one another so well, we understand something that the rest of you never really grasp. I have to make those kinds of calls every single day Elektra. I have allowed, and will allow, truly horrific things to occur that I could *easily* prevent simply because it will have some positive outcome years down the line that I consider worth the sacrifice. Do you want to know what your future held if I hadn't intervened in your life? If you had chosen not to walk through the portal when I gave you the option?" I lectured
"Wh.." she started to speak but I interrupted her "You died in Matthew's arms before Alexandra had you resurrected as the Black Sky. You would go on to be the Hand's weapon, although you would bite the hand that made you later and take Alexandra's head. Then, down forty stories under the city, you would fight with your love, Matthew, and his friends along with the remaining Fingers. Only for the explosives that Matthew had planted in the building above to collapse on all of you, burying you, him, and the rest of the Hand leadership.
"That was supposed to be your future Elektra, so by your own logic, I should have sacrificed you and Matt to permanently die with the Hand. Is that what I should have done?"
She was floored and didn't seem to know what to say "You knew I was...? Matthew died because of...? Wha...?" she shook her head "Why did you save me then?"
"Because I saw potential in you and chose to believe that I could ensure the Hand's destruction another way and that your value would outweigh the benefit of their destruction. I chose to put faith in you, just as I trust you to put faith in me. I didn't know what you being the Black Sky actually meant, nor did I know your parentage or about Stick, but neither would have changed my decision.
"The point of all of this though, well that... You know the Oaths we swore when we bound ourselves to the Covenant. What is the first Oath?" I said.
"To do whatever is necessary to ensure the survival of humanity." she said, before continuing incredulously, "Are you implying that this was necessary to prevent the destruction of humanity?"
"Refraining from telling you what the Hand was after in New York and letting you find out on your own increases our odds against a future threat, yes." I said. 'because I knew it would cause this conversation whenever you told us about the bones and I could use the opportunity to build your trust in me, but you don't need to know that'
"What could scare you and Alkasha Octavian? What could scare her?" she asked, her voice much calmer and the anger mostly gone.
"Things that you can't know about yet. We will have a very slim opportunity to shift things in a direction that will dramatically improve our odds of survival but she and I are threading a needle while being thrown about by a hurricane trying to pull all of this off. The next five years are crucial, if we manage to hit that shatter point just right then everything changes. And so I let you learn about the Hand's objective on your own." I answered, thinking again about just how much I had tied up in ensuring that Loki's invasion came off just so. It was the one chance to deprive Thanos of the Mind Stone, and for that, I was willing to pay virtually any price.
We floated there, staring at the home we had been called on to protect, for a while before Elektra finally said "Ok, I guess I understand. It's just, frustrating. I'm glad I'm not you though, trying to tango with time is not something that I ever want to deal with. I like cause and effect working in that order, you do something and it has an effect is how things are supposed to work. Not the other way around."
I laughed before opening a portal back to our base "You don't know the half of it."
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