章節 83: Chapter 83 Kansas City Shuffle
The echo of car alarms and the screeching of tires bounced back and forth through the narrow city streets as a battle between Spiderman and a sentient mound of sand wrecked everything around.
Harry and Jade sat leisurely atop a nearby building on recliners, passing a bag of movie theater popcorn back and forth between them while sipping sodas from large fountain cups. Today was a date between the pair where they were supposed to see a movie, but when Harry was informed by Link about a rather unusual bank robbery, Jade said she'd rather check that out instead.
Link was built into Peter's suit so he'd been informed and had already arrived on scene by the time it took Harry and Jade to leave the movie theater.
While watching the living sandman morph and mold himself to fight off Peter, Jade asked with a mouth full of popcorn, "So, what's his story?"
Harry shrugged. "Don't know."
"Wait, really? I thought you were like omnipotent or something."
Harry rolled his eyes and said, "You mean omniscient. And No, I don't know everything. It just so happens that the Libraries of the Sanctum Sanctorum record a lot of weird stuff so I'm familiar with a lot of weird stuff. I may also hack into Shield on occasion to look for a good chance to prank someone. There is still a lot more I don't know."
Harry received a message on his phone he read using the Technopathic interface and said, "Link says his name is Flint Marko. He's a criminal loaned to Oscorp. Their servers are internal and don't use Brilliance Tech so he can't hack them remotely. But he guesses they probably tried to reproduce the Cellular Mineralization effect they found in Ben Grimm's cells on another person."
Jade asked with a bit of confusion, "Why give a criminal those kinds of powers? I mean look at him?"
The Sandman in question had just turned his arm into a massive hammer and shouted, "I'm gonna squash you like a bug!"
And Peter of course quipped back while dodging the strikes, "I don't think I've heard that before. Very unique. You must be very well known for your grammatical prowess and originality!"
Sandman of course wasn't quite thick enough to miss the densely packed sarcasm and roared back while still trying to grab and break Peter.
Jade giggled and Harry rolled his eyes. He hoped endless hours training against voiceless machines and mindless monsters would curb Peter's habit of talking back, but if anything, it made it worse. Turns out spending so long fighting against foes who didn't talk made Peter more appreciative of those who did.
Harry eventually decided it was a lost cause. Harry liked to do things relatively efficiently while Peter had a habit of dragging things out and using stalling tactics against things he didn't know how to fight against. It resulted in higher collateral damage but was safer than rushing without thinking when you didn't have a surefire way to solve a problem.
As for Jade's question about why test on Marko, Harry answered, "My guess? They either didn't expect him to survive or they wanted someone who would fight Spider-Man if he did."
Harry figured he could probably cure the dude, but since the first thing Marko did after escaping the testing area was rob a bank, Harry lost all interest in helping the man.
Jade sipped some more soda while Marko threw a car at Peter and asked, "Where's the Fantastic Four? I thought they'd be here by now."
"Science conference in Berlin. Doom's attending too so not only did Reed 'have' to go, but everyone else went with him."
"Oh. So what would have happened if Peter wasn't here then?" She was basically asking if Harry himself would have stepped in or let the girls take out the enhanced if there was no one else to do so.
Harry shook his head, "You're looking at it backwards. They chose a criminal because they wanted him to fight Spider-Man. The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Obscurus, Spider-Man. The appearance of individuals with powers causes people with money to try to make their own. It's because Spider-Man frequents New York that Oscorp made this. Envy has always been one of the better ways to make people with a lot of money start spending it on stupid things."
Jade frowned and asked, "Is that why you won't let us fight crime like Peter?" Jade was many things. Stupid was not one of them. Neither was naivety and once all the pieces were put before her, it wasn't difficult to put them together.
Harry affirmed, "Yep. If all of you were already on the streets, we'd have a half dozen just like Marko by now."
Jade gave a cheeky grin and asked, "So when five more guys like Marko show up and start committing crime, we can suit up and fight crime too?"
Harry gave Jade a deadpan stare at her attempt at such a ridiculous leap in logic, but Jade expertly returned the deadpan with an adorable smile. Rather than start a battle against Woman Logic, Harry decided to just admit defeat at the beginning and said, "Fine, but only if there is a point where six people like Marko are all acting at the same time. Six or more different people acting on different days of the week can be handled by Peter and the Fantastic Four."
Jade shouted, "Yes!" and jumped onto Harry's seat and hugged him. She snuggled up and said, "I love you," and got comfortable using Harry as her chair now and watching the fight which was wrapping up.
Police cars had already blocked off the street but bullets weren't doing anything to Marko and Peter was doing his best to antagonize him into fighting him over the cops. Eventually Peter tricked Marko into punching a fire hydrant off its bolts. Peter used his webs to grab and pull over a sewer cover lid and used it to bounce the water towards Marko, soaking the man completely. Rather than get washed away, Marko was forced to come completely together. Peter used the chance to shoot a web at the wall behind Marko and pull himself forward into a flying kick, sending Marko at the wall.
The fact that Marko didn't break up from the kick or wall impact and even seemed to stay down was all promising. Peter then wrapped Marko from head to toe in webbing, took out a small card that said, "Greetings from your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man," and placed it on the cocoon before shooting a web at the edge of a nearby building and pulling himself away.
Jade asked, "You got all that on video right?"
Harry answered, "Of course." He'd taken out a camera sphere linked to Link so the AI could monitor and learn from the battle. Link would also edit the video and place it on Videoshare. There'd be other videos taken from other spots, but as long as Videoshare had the best ones, people would be more likely to post similar videos onto the site in the future.
It was only later that Harry found out that a lot of the comments on the video were people saying Spider-Man should read One Piece so he wouldn't waste so much time trying to figure out a weakness everyone already knows. Apparently, it is common knowledge to One Piece Fans that a Sand Human is weak against water.
Harry decided to remember this since it would make great teasing and/or pranking material to use on Peter later.
The summer was almost over and the fall semester was around the corner. Harry would teach three Foundation of Metaphysics classes and one Advanced Metaphysics class. Getting a degree in Metaphysics required four classes with the last two being Applied Metaphysics and Theoretical Metaphysics. Those who wanted to get a Masters and Doctorate in Metaphysics could submit an application to study under Harry or do independent research. Since Harry could read and type emails at the speed of thought, he could handle most interactions online without using too much of his time.
A number of Harry's students had used what they learned in the class, especially the projects, to submit Patent applications and there were several approvals. Ironically, some of the better students sold their patents to some companies that made decent offers and no longer needed to work for a living, so did not end up applying for Advanced Metaphysics. Harry had mixed feelings about that. Was it wrong to short sell your potential? After a bit of consideration, he decided it wasn't. A person might consider their present more valuable than their future, and what a person did with their life was their business.
There had been a number of attempts and offers to interview Harry, but he declined and avoided them all. If people wanted to know about him, they could look him up. He wasn't going to make it easy for them and have his life story put on the 9 o'clock news. Especially since his life story was filled with lies and stuff he didn't really want to draw attention to.
Harry had spent the remainder of the summer taking the Hellcat apart and putting each piece into his Inventory. This gave him the same details he'd get by taking everything completely apart bit by bit
What Harry learned from the spacecraft was consistent with what he learned from the weapons he got from the Hub and the armor and personal weapons of the Starforce dudes. The tech was certainly better than Earth's but not by that much. There was no great, revolutionary design that could be copied and distributed to make Earth a space faring race within a year. No, the main reason that the tech could do stuff earth tech could not was the presence of minerals and materials which didn't exist on Earth. That meant to make his own, he'd have to buy said materials and to experiment he'd have to buy even more.
Funds weren't an issue, but instead of using Alchemy to make gold, he'd rather use it to make the materials themselves. That would also take a lot of experimentation, but at least it wouldn't leave him reliant on foreign sources.
The only thing that was relatively cool was actually the gauntlets from the Starforce Captain. They contained a very minute amount of an element apparently called Gravitonium and was highly versatile in how it could be used to manipulate gravity.
The Starforce Armor wasn't bad but not of great use to Harry. Harry's physical durability was determined by his stats and he was about thirty times more difficult to injure without armor. That sounds like a lot but bullets didn't bounce off his skin and a knife could still piece it. It's just that the bullet damage would be negligible and knives would not be able to pierce deeply. Someone with normal strength trying to cut Harry would be like trying to slice through really cold clay depending on the sharpness of the knife.
The main reason Harry didn't pull a Tony Stark and make his own armor was because his fighting style didn't require him to get hit, so making armor wasn't that useful and his inventory was a better arsenal than any armor Tony could likely build.
Still, Harry had a lot of new toys and would feel itchy if he didn't play with them.
*Ping*
[Tech Path has risen to Rank 42]
[Crafting Path has risen to Rank 36]
[Magic Path has risen to Rank 46]
When he finished his latest project just as the Summer ended, the shock of the pop up was rather heavy. His tech Path which took forever to increase rose two levels, his Crafting three levels, and even his Magic Path rose a level.
The finished piece looked entirely made of metal and was the size of a backpack. It even had straps to use to wear it though it was rather thin. It looked like an empty backpack. Harry tapped on the activation switch and the bottom of the backpack fell out and turned into a chair beneath Harry which then lifted him off the ground. The shell extended and connected and after just a second, Harry was suddenly inside a single man fighter craft that didn't have a single seam.
Harry doubted he'd have much use for this thing on Earth, it was specifically designed for space. It was probably one of the most powerful artifacts on the planet.
Harry used Goblin Silver for circuitry. Enchanted Adamantium for the frame. Vibranium for the shell. The interior was even lined with a few parts of various magical beasts and had a built in Undetectable Extension Charm meaning that a bulk of the systems were actually stored in a pocket dimension which a majority of the parts retracted into when in stealth mode.
Harry built the power sources of the Mandarin's rings into the ship, and once they were fitted and properly repurposed, Harry could get them to do what they were initially built to do. The Matter Rearranger for example allowed the ship to repair itself and change its shape without seams.
The spacecraft had a built-in connection to the Spacegates so he could use them himself, but he wouldn't need them for most of his traveling. The ship had two FTL engines. The first was pretty much just a magically supercharged version of the one he took out of the Hellcat. Quite a bit faster, but still not as good as a Space Gate. The second was original though.
Harry determined that the Light and Darkness rings the Mandarin used likely came from the propulsion of the ship he scavenged them off. The ring that shot light could also bend gravity and the Darkness Ring's intangibility could be used combined with that to make the ship intangible and accelerate it to light speed in any direction to travel. This Darkness ring would have also allowed the ship to create a Portal to the Darkforce Dimension where space is different, allowing for long distance travel to be done quickly through the Darkforce dimension.
Harry didn't have a map for the Darkforce Dimension and even if he did, he certainly wouldn't travel through it just to save time. That was about as smart as taking a shortcut through a haunted abandoned cemetery in the middle of a foggy moonless night. Nope.
Instead, Harry used the Light ring to directly interact with starlight and combined that principle with a dozen others, each crazier than the last, to create an engine Harry called a Star Driver. It basically used star light to pull itself towards the star at speeds which would not be possible under any normal circumstance. The navigation system would simply choose stars in the direction of the destination and pull the ship towards them. Closer stars were easier to pull towards than further stars so the actual course the ship took would be quite zip-zaggy. Although stars further out were not in the same spot once the ship got there, the ship would follow the more recent light as it got closer so the course auto-corrected.
The ship would go full intangible during the flight so the only danger was passing through a black hole, but due to the nature of how black holes absorb and bend light, you literally could not fly directly into a blackhole while following a path of light.
In addition to the engine, the rings were also built into the weapons system. It had an Incineration Beam, Ice Beam, Concussive Beam, Lightning, Sonic blast, Tornado beam, Disintegration Beam, as well as lasers of several strengths and powers. It could also create shields when it could not become intangible, could create a dozen illusionary doppelgangers of the ship around it while becoming invisible itself, and telepathically interact with the pilot. Harry also installed three railguns turrets for dogfights.
Overall this was a masterpiece of death that could do more DPS than Harry's strongest attacks and fly faster and with more precision than Harry himself or his speeder bike.
That being said, it was a waste to use so many resources for space battles Harry wasn't even sure he'd end up in. Thankfully, the Matter Rearranger really gave Harry a lot of options. In addition to being a single man craft, the backpack could also transform into a Drone or a Turret. That meant if Harry wanted to use it, he could throw it into the air and it would turn into a flying drone with a terrifying arsenal or throw it at the ground where it would turn into a turret that would create a shield to defend whatever Harry wanted and then shoot whatever was unlucky enough to try to attack what the turret was protecting.
The ship/drone/turret had a built in AI that would target what needed to be targeted or Harry could take remote control and use it himself. He decided to call it Navi, and he did of course build in a connection to Link.
Navi's primary purpose, when Harry wasn't playing with it, was to scout and map the Galaxy. Navi could use the Star Driver to instantly go to a star, check for planets, check if the planets looked useful, then move onto the next star.
Navi wasn't a true AI like DANGER and Link, but had the potential to become one. Navi could learn and become smarter and even stronger over time. The Goblin Silver of Navi's circuitry would not wear and tear, but actually become more efficient as time went on.
The danger of making an AI was of course the Parameters. So of course, Harry being Harry didn't put in any for Navi. She would be given a task and a possible way to do so. If she was unable to do so without additional data, she could ask Harry or Link for assistance. If it was not possible to do, Navi could elect that the effort required to perform the task outweighed the value of the task. Everything would be logged of course and Harry would go over the logs. Value was usually a guestimate and Harry could advise to increase or decrease something assigned value or make a suggestion for other ways to guestimate value.
For example, if Harry assigned Navi to protect a group of people during a dangerous situation and the group of people ended up being suicidal idiots, there would be a point where Navi would just abandon them if another task of equal or greater priority had to be done like protecting a less suicidal group. Under such circumstances Harry would probably say, 'Good call, I didn't think they were that stupid.'
Besides exploring the Galaxy, Navi was also dropping relays into the orbits of various stars. Using these, Harry and Link could communicate with Navi as long as she wasn't too far from a relay. Navi could give Harry her coordinates within a few seconds of being asked for them and Harry could open a portal for her to come through if he needed her. Navi also had a built in Intergalactic Portkey in case something weird happened like getting sucked through a wormhole into an unfamiliar region of space.
The first week of school had Harry a bit bummed out. The students for most of his Foundation Classes were not locals, but people who came to New York specifically for the class and most were way too stuck up. In addition to being peeved that Harry taught such a groundbreaking subject at NYU instead of MIT, most of the newcomers were much older than Harry and from the questions asked during the introductions, most lacked respect for Harry due to what they heard about him.
This of course meant that the light hearted pranks he had planned would be shelved. He'd have to break out the big pranks.
It was also during that week that Oscorp exploded and Peter got two more friends.
Doctor Octavius was using a rather fancy four-armed harness to create a small sun to get Oscorp out of Stark's shadow in the energy business and things didn't go well. According to Link, Otto's girlfriend had died of a heart attack earlier and Link guessed that Otto's mind wasn't where it should have been for such a dangerous experiment.
In addition to the accident fusing the harness into the Doctor's spine, it was apparently a two for one special. The huge electrical surge created from the accident, somehow caused another accident, in which the electrician Maxwell Dillon got big time zapped in a massive explosion which shot him through a lab.
Instead of dying, something someone was working on got into his system. None of the theories Link and Harry came up made sense, but the best one was that someone was working on how Johnny was able to generate fire and whatever they were working on got into the zapped Maxwell which, somehow, gave Maxwell the ability to generate and control electricity like a living capacitor.
So while Harry was grading papers and trying to come up with a Project for the the jerks that had to 'suffer' through the halls of NYU, Spider-Man ended up fighting Doctor Octopus and Electro.
During the weekend when Harry was exploring the Galaxy and the girls were doing their thing, Otto actually came over to Harry's house and tried to rip off the door and break in, either to find something or to speak with or kidnap Harry. In either case, Harry's camera got a clear image of the shocked look on Otto's face when the arms he'd built to manipulate the energy of a star were unable to break the lock, turn the knob, or smash the door through.
Harry figured that whoever was watching his place probably sweat dropped when they saw how strong Harry's door was. Harry was confident the Hulk would have difficulties breaking it, much less a few metal arms. Otto's next actions confirmed to any onlookers that they'd have no better luck with the windows. The camera saw Otto look at a parked car and clearly saw him thinking about lifting the car and smashing it into the wall and door. Thankfully for the person who parked there, Otto decided to leave when the sound of sirens approached. His arms could toss cars, but his head wasn't bulletproof.
Harry figured Otto knew that all of Harry's classes had an agent or spy with a gun somewhere so it wasn't a great idea to break into the class either.
In the Andromeda Galaxy, Harry spent some time on Hala, the Kree homeworld and several other Kree worlds in order to look for a target to prank. Hala itself was an oceanless red planet a decent chunk larger than the earth, giving it far more gravity. Most of the planet was rocky and filled with military training bases and cities that looked like Star Wars' Coruscant in the way they abused metal and the vertical limits of buildings and structures.
The problem with pranking the Kree was that there was no good way to prep a prank with the Supreme Intelligence looking over the metaphorical shoulder of every Kree citizen. His first attempt required him to replace a maintenance AI with something less benign but shortly afterwards the AI was deleted, and replaced with a normal one before it even had the chance to do something interesting. At first Harry thought he had gotten caught, but he learned that all AI on Hala were deleted shortly after their creation. The SI preferred to be the only permanent AI.
Next Harry checked the Kree data gathering departments. If he could fake enough data, he could make a nice prank out of that as well. Maybe some pictures of the Silver Surfer and Galactus? The Kree Empire certainly knew about those two. Hala is considered safe from Galactus because it has neither the thermal nor organic energy the devourer of worlds requires from his dietary needs, but some evidence of his arrival would certainly be a fun/terrifying prank.
Unfortunately, any data like that would get flagged to be triple checked before it was well known enough to cause an impact. Faking the data three times wouldn't work either because no matter how good Harry's data doctoring skills were, a fake was a fake if you knew where to look a second time. Pranks like Goose, the Devourer of Worlds only worked for a limited audience and only because people would hesitate to take a second look rather than run away and scream.
Another problem with using false reports to prank the planet was that the Supreme Intelligence controlled all information that went in and out of Hala. Basically anything that didn't praise the SI or wasn't propaganda was censured out.
Not that this removed any possibilities, it just made it a challenge. Harry figured there were two decent paths to use prank Hala. He could lure a lot of them somewhere and give them false data and let them return and spread it among themselves. Or perform something big on Hala that people will talk to each other about, bypassing the electronic censure.
A prank where you put in more effort than the effect of the prank is not really worth it, so Harry of course chose the easier prank of luring them away.
As for what to lure them away with? That required Harry to spend a few days hacking not just the Kree but the Nova as well to learn of all the goodies and treasures that were known to these guys.
Next, Harry had to place trackers on a dozen different ships heading out of Hala. His small ship was able to do this without difficulty though so it wasn't a problem. After all the ships arrived at their locations, Harry got the locations of each one and made a portal to their locations.
None of them noticed Harry or even remembered him. But all of them remembered going into a bar and hearing a rumor. Some guy who came back from a certain desolate planet had become ridiculously strong and returned to his planet to kill a warchief. He was so powerful, he ruled the planet until his power waned and he was captured and interrogated.
According to the rumor, the guy was a scavenger who found a mirror.
The rumor was broken and different people heard different things. But when it was all assembled, the target was identified. Harry had no doubt the Supreme Intelligence would identify the treasure as the Black Vortex.
The Black Vortex was a full length mirror with a frame that appeared carved from stone in the shape of a man's torso. It was created by someone, Harry could only assume from the evidence, who was a celestial since it's purpose was completely in line with their way of thinking. The Black Vortex was a pool of cosmic energy. If one looked into it, the mirror would show what they looked like saturated with cosmic energy and all the person had to do to 'take a dip' was say, "I submit to the Black Vortex." Of course, the person would not generate additional cosmic power. The more they used the less they had and most bodies weren't built to hold cosmic power so even if they didn't use any, they'd slowly lose it anyways if they didn't return for another dip.
The planet Harry made the dude from did have some easily hackable records and all the details would be available to the first person who looked for it.
The planet Harry chose as the place the 'scavenger found the mirror' was a war torn barren rock formally called Kymellia III by the horse headed species that destroyed themselves on the planet. It was covered in ruins and destruction and a great place for any scavenger to waste their lives.
It took a month but eventually the Supreme Intelligence took the bait and hundreds of ships were sent to Kymellia III. This was just a distraction though, something to draw the Supreme Intelligence's attention. Now all Harry had to do was frame the Supreme Intelligence for attempted genocide of the Kree race. Should be fun.
*Author's Note*
Sorry for the delay. It's hard to get into the mood the write filler and I keep getting distracted by other plot bunnies. Thankfully I came up with a idea that should be fun to write for the next chapter. The problem with bait is that you don't always attract just what you're fishing for.
Oh, and a Kansas City Shuffle is where everyone looks to the left and you go to the right.
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