(AN: Bonus chappie! Why? Cause someone stoned me LOL, kindly leave a review instead. Critic or praise is welcomed. Enjoy!)
Elias was snoring at his station.
Face pressed against the cool stainless surface, one arm dangling uselessly off the side, chest rising and falling in a rhythm that suggested he hadn't slept in a very long time.
The bakery was already open.
The scent of fresh bread filled the air, ovens humming softly in the background.
Customers came and went, casting curious glances toward the unconscious man at the back.
The employees gathered nearby, whispering among themselves.
"He looks wrecked," one of them murmured.
"Club," another said confidently.
"Definitely a club."
"With a woman," a third added, nodding sagely.
"Till daylight."
The employees laughed.
By the time a customer finally asked, "Is your boss okay?" all five of them answered in perfect unison.
"He partied too hard last night."
None of them even blinked.
And honestly—could you blame them?
Elias' restrictions had lifted the exact moment SHIELD neutralized the last creature.
From then on, there had been no sleep.
Just washing his face, changing clothes, opening the shop, and collapsing the moment his body finally gave up.
Which was… now.
The five employees watched him with a mix of amusement and concern.
They were a tight-knit group—people Elias trusted enough to teach his methods to.
Not secret formulas.
Just precise ones.
Measurements that left no room for error.
Timing down to the second.
Temperatures adjusted by instinct and experience.
With those, they could replicate his bread and pastries perfectly—same texture, same taste, same warmth that kept customers coming back.
They were enthusiasts first.
Bakers second.
And loyal.
Mara Velasquez, the oldest among them, folded her arms and sighed.
Late forties, hair tied back neatly, eyes sharp enough to miss nothing. She had baked longer than Elias had been alive.
Beside her stood Lina Cho, mid-twenties, always energetic, flour perpetually dusting her apron like a badge of honor.
Rhea Martinez leaned against the counter, calm and observant, her pastries famous among regulars for being almost too pretty to eat.
The two men were by the ovens.
Caleb Reyes, broad-shouldered and quiet, preferred bread over conversation.
And Noah Whitaker, younger, curious, endlessly experimenting when Mara wasn't watching.
Mara was the first to act.
She walked over and gently tapped Elias on the shoulder.
"Boss," she said firmly.
"Go home."
Elias stirred, eyes fluttering open.
"…shop?" he muttered.
"We've got it," Mara said without hesitation.
"All of it. You look like death reheated."
He didn't argue.
Didn't even ask questions.
Elias straightened slowly, blinking blearily, then reached into his pocket and placed the shop keys on the counter.
"Thanks," he said quietly.
And with that, he walked out.
His house wasn't far.
A modest place just a few streets away, bought years ago when the bakery hit its peak.
No luxury.
No excess.
Just enough space for him—and silence.
The moment he lay down, exhaustion finally won.
But not before the translucent system window appeared before his eyes.
[Villain System
Status
Name: Elias Mercer
Level: 1
Designation: Villain — Novice
Abilities:
Telekinesis — Level 1 (new)
• Ability to move objects using mental force
• Current Limit: 10 kg
Skills:
Unforgivable Curses (HP world)
- Imperius (maxed)
- Crucio (maxed)
- Avada Kedavra (maxed)
Charms (HP world)
- Obliviate (maxed)
Inventory
Slots: 30
Occupied: 1 / 30
Slot 1: Facehugger Eggs ×3
Slot 2: Empty
… ]
Elias stared at the screen.
Level one.
Again.
But this time… the word Novice burned brighter than Unclassified ever had.
He closed his eyes.
And for the first time since judgement was passed—
He slept.
.
.
.
Two weeks passed.
By the second day, Elias was already back to normal—or at least as normal as someone who had watched monsters crawl out of people could be.
Sleep returned in fragments.
The bakery reopened on schedule.
Customers came and went, unaware that the smell of bread and sugar masked a far darker truth beneath the neighborhood streets.
Life, annoyingly, insisted on continuing.
SHIELD, however, did not slow down.
Elias knew they had taken things to another level not because they announced it—of course they didn't—but because Iron Man would not stop flying over the area.
High-altitude passes.
Slow patrols.
Occasional hovering pauses that lingered just a second too long to be coincidence.
Tony Stark also started showing up more often in his shop.
Sometimes he dropped by in full armor, faceplate lifted, ordering pie like it was a field ration.
Sometimes he came in civilian clothes, sunglasses indoors, pretending he wasn't scanning the place with every step.
He never said anything directly.
He didn't need to.
The message was clear.
We're still looking.
On this particular day—exactly two weeks after the incident—Elias was behind the counter when the bell over the door rang.
He looked up.
Steve Rogers stood just inside the bakery, poorly disguised in a way only Steve Rogers could manage.
White shirt stretched far too well across a sculpted chest, a jacket hanging uselessly from his shoulders instead of being worn properly.
Baseball cap pulled low.
Sunglasses that fooled absolutely no one.
Elias could swear he heard Rhea inhale sharply.
In fact, all five employees noticed.
Rhea outright froze for half a second, eyes visibly drifting before snapping back into place.
Mara, ever the professional, recovered first, smoothing her apron and stepping forward.
"Welcome," she said politely, leading him toward a corner table.
"Please, have a seat."
Steve smiled—warm, earnest, devastatingly sincere.
"I'll have a slice of cake," he said, voice low.
"And… coffee, please."
Rhea suddenly looked like she was attending a formal inspection.
Elias watched the exchange with narrowed eyes, already suspicious.
Cap can't be here without a reason. Can he?
.
.
.
Two Weeks Earlier
New SHIELD Temporary Facility
The bodies were laid out in sterile containment rooms, sealed behind reinforced glass and multiple layers of security.
Scientists moved carefully, every step recorded, every breath monitored.
The creatures were officially designated using terminology lifted straight from a decades-old movie.
Facehugger.
Xenomorph.
Ripley would've sued if she were real.
The good news came quickly—and sharply contrasted the horror of the discovery.
No additional eggs had been found.
No new victims.
No surviving facehuggers.
Containment, for now, was absolute.
Tony Stark cooperated fully.
He didn't joke.
He didn't posture.
He ran scans, cross-referenced tissue samples, and verified—down to the molecular level—that the creatures matched the theoretical biology depicted in the films with disturbing accuracy.
And when did Tony Stark become a genius in advance biology, you ask? Well two days before came to this new laboratory.
Acidic blood.
Rapid growth.
Extreme adaptability.
Host-dependent aggression.
"This isn't evolution," Tony said quietly at one point, staring at the data.
"It's design."
No one argued. Not even Fury who was called to listen to Stark's resulting analysis.
Tony let the hologram rotate in silence for a few seconds before he spoke again.
"Just to be clear," he said, eyes locked on the skeletal silhouette of the creature, "I'm not here because I want to be."
Several SHIELD analysts exchanged looks.
Fury didn't interrupt.
"You brought me in for three reasons," Tony continued, pacing slowly.
"One: how the hell was it made. Two: how to hunt it. Three: how to kill it without losing half a city in the process."
He tapped the air, and the projection split into layers—musculature, exoskeleton, internal structure.
"Creation first. This thing isn't a natural species. No evolutionary tree leads here. Every trait is optimized, no redundancies. It adapts too fast, grows too fast, and doesn't waste energy on anything that doesn't help it survive or kill."
Tony gestured at the rib-like exoskeleton.
"Biomechanical design. Not metal, not bone—something in between. Flexible under stress, rigid under impact. It disperses kinetic energy instead of absorbing it. That's why small-arms fire annoys it more than it hurts."
He flicked his wrist, zooming in on internal organs.
"Second: hunting it. This thing doesn't just react—it predicts. It uses sound, vibration, pheromones, probably low-level electromagnetic sensing. It avoids direct confrontation unless cornered or confident. Prefers ambush. Vertical surfaces? No problem. Walls, ceilings, ventilation shafts—if you can crawl there, it can get there faster."
Another gesture.
The blood highlighted in glowing green.
"And this is where most people die stupidly. Acidic blood. Not corrosive—molecularly aggressive. Eats through steel, concrete, body armor. Shoot it in a closed space and congratulations, you've just turned the room into a death trap."
The room was silent now.
Tony didn't smile.
"Facehuggers are delivery systems. Implant embryos directly into the host's respiratory tract. No surgical removal once implantation begins without killing the host. Gestation time? Minutes to hours depending on conditions. After that—"
He made a small explosion motion with his hand.
"Chestburster. Rapid growth phase follows. The thing you saw at full size? That didn't take days. It took hours."
One of the analysts swallowed.
Tony wasn't finished.
"Strength-wise? Stronger than a super-soldier, pound for pound. Speed? Faster than anything human. Intelligence? Not human, but tactical. It learns. You hurt it once, it won't let you do it the same way twice."
He paused, letting that sink in.
"Now, weaknesses. Because yes, it can be killed."
He highlighted joints, sensory clusters, and structural choke points.
"Extreme trauma works. High-caliber, sustained fire in open environments. Explosives—directed, not scatter. Fire slows it but doesn't guarantee a kill. Vacuum exposure? Effective. Extreme cold can immobilize it temporarily. Energy weapons—" he glanced at his own arc reactor projection, "—are promising."
Tony straightened, the hologram fading.
"In short: treat it like a living weapon, not an animal. Isolate. Overwhelm. Never fight it where its blood can kill you faster than it can."
Silence followed.
Then Fury spoke.
"That everything?"
Tony exhaled and rubbed his face.
"That's everything useful," he said.
"Which brings us to my interest level."
He turned, already walking toward the exit.
"This thing's biology is impressive, you better find who design it, fast. However, at the end of the day, but it's not my problem. I've got my own clock ticking."
He stopped at the door, half-turning back.
"If you need suits, scanners, or something that doesn't go boom, call me."
A beat.
"But if you're asking me to babysit nightmares from a bad sci-fi movie? Hard pass."
The door slid shut behind him.
Tony Stark was already gone—back to his labs, his equations, and a problem no movie monster could solve for him.
A new element.
Or he wouldn't survive long enough to see how this story ended.
Fury didn't speak right away.
He stood there, hands behind his back, staring at the space where Tony Stark had been.
SHIELD's own experts had briefed him for hours before this—biologists, weapons analysts, xenotechnologists.
They had charts, probabilities, and carefully worded uncertainties.
Tony had none of that.
He had certainty.
Not guesses.
Not theories.
Conclusions.
Fury finally exhaled through his nose.
"We already knew most of the surface-level details," he said to no one in particular.
"But Stark didn't just tell us what it is."
One of the senior analysts nodded grimly.
"He told us how it thinks."
"That's the difference between surviving a threat and writing names on a wall," Fury replied.
For all his arrogance, Stark had delivered. Cleanly.
Efficiently.
And without hiding anything.
Fury allowed himself a rare moment of satisfaction.
Good thing he was stable enough to help, Fury thought.
The palladium issue hadn't gone public, but SHIELD knew how close Stark walked to the edge.
Today, at least, his mind had been sharp.
Too sharp.
Fury turned away, already shifting gears.
Mercer's Hearth
The thought surfaced unbidden.
Elias.
A civilian on paper.
A baker.
A man whose shop had become a recurring footnote which involved Tony Stark walking out with a breakthrough grin on his face.
Fury frowned.
I already sent Rogers.
Captain America wasn't there to intimidate.
Fury didn't need that.
He sent Steve because the hero was having a hard time fitting in to this era.
He was hoping for Rogers to find his answers there.
Same reason Tony had gone in chasing clarity and walked out with his own answers.
Maybe Elias' shop had something.
Fury's gaze hardened.
What if this isn't the end?
What if the xenomorphs were just the opening act?
The idea sat poorly in his gut.
He made his decision.
"Prep a vehicle," Fury ordered. "I'm heading out."
.
.
.
The bell above the bakery door rang softly.
Elias, who just finished serving Tony and was now looking through the egg pies, froze for just half a second too long.
Then he looked up.
A tall, broad-shouldered man stood at the entrance—black coat, measured posture, a single visible eye already scanning the room like a battlefield.
Nick Fury.
The air in the shop felt heavier.
Elias smiled, polite, professional—but inside, something cold curled in his chest.
…Why do I suddenly feel like today just got complicated?
The bell stopped swinging.
And the door closed behind Fury.
End of Chapter 9