Chapter 20: Thoughts Of An Overanalytical Genius (Timeskip)
[8 Months Later...]:
[Luke Blake POV]:
A matte black 2023 Audi Q5 Sportback with crimson streak-like accents drove along an express lane. Traffic was dense on the regular highways and the people inside had a very important meeting to get to — and the speed at which the driver of the car was driving was a testament to how important said meeting was.
[Car Reference 1]:
Inside the car, Luke sat in the backseat, head leaning against the back of his knuckle and arm holding up and supporting the weight by leaning against the door as Luke looked out, emptily, lost in thought. He was dressed in all black — black trousers, shoes, belt and button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his wrists. The shirt accentuated his muscular torso but he was paying too little attention to anything but his thoughts to appreciate his own appearance.
[Luke Blake Reference Image 3]:
'The Master has yet to return to Earth in all this time…,' he was thinking. 'He's not dead or I would feel it — We all would have, honestly. Our connection, despite the distance, has only strengthened. I sense the addition of the triplets has only strengthened our cosmic connection we have with one another…'
Luke briefly looked up at the man behind the wheel:
A dirty blonde, physically toned individual dressed in a black and white suit tailored to his own lean build. Through the front middle mirror Luke noted the blue eyes focused on the road, two lines cut at his right brow and a broad line tattoo going horizontally across the neck, with hints of an intricate but detailed tattoos going further down just below the cricoid cartilage of the neck. Dagger-shaped earrings pierced his ears alongside similarly colored black helix, long spear-like earring piercing his right helix cartilage of his ear.
This was Tristan Axton — one of the triplets made from DNA of both Luke and Crystal, pre-imbued with a sliver of Lewis' soul, allowing independence and freedom of choice to the clone. Like Luke, though, they were still loyal to Lewis with key aspects of the Master's memories.
[Tristan Axton Reference Image]:
'My matter manipulation through telekinesis isn't nearly as good as the Master's blatant control over it, but between my siblings, I have the greatest control over such a skillset, even when compared to Crystal who has fine control over manipulating matter,' Luke thought to himself. 'Even still, we were lucky to wind up with triplets. Makes our operations go smoother with more pieces to move on the board. Tristan being the only male made him qualify to being my direct apprentice and heir. Of course, he was also the only one who was tame enough or possessed the required mentality to lead a company in the future anyway. One of his sisters is too wild for corporate life and is more suited to more barbaric practices, while the other sister is much too empathetic and slightly meek to actually be in any place of vital leadership honestly.
'There's also the fact that their powersets are completely different from their original donors. Likely a mutation as a result of becoming a set of triplets instead of a singular entity… Or so OMNIS claims.'
Releasing a sigh, Luke's thoughts returned to the Master.
'I'm sure he's still going around the nearby universe absorbing power hubs and all, but if he doesn't return one day soon, the events of the Avengers movie will occur, and, soon after, New York's invasion by the Chitauri. I was hoping he would make his debut appearance then. It would make for excellent PR,' Luke thought privately before moving his thoughts along. 'Octavius is showing signs of becoming more and more like Doctor Octavius — or Dr Octopus, even despite my moves made to prevent him from becoming his alter ego. Honestly, it might be cheaper to just let him become the Octopus. Spider-Man needs the adding of yet another villain to his portfolio. He needs the growth, I'd say, and the plot demands it, no doubt. If he truly becomes Doctor Octopus, then I'll leave his fate to Peter.
'Crystal has been stuck on Blue Side of the Moon to defend it from an ongoing silent war with the Skrulls, who, after noticing Apocalypse's absence, has tried to take it back — To no avail on their end, of course. That new squad of hers is efficient…Still, she'll be busy for a while, especially since she refuses calls for help… Something about 'proving females are just as capable of winning battles as males', or something like that."
Honestly, Luke swears she's just doing this because she gets to experiment unchallenged on alien species, but she's his sister and Luke loves his peace, so he won't get into her business unprompted.
'Chris has adopted the codename 'Huntsmaster' as tribute to graduating in his apprenticeship with Kraven the Hunter. The two of them have basically become brothers in the short time that they've worked together. They've both even founded a covert bounty hunting agency, strictly off-the-books; they've already reached national level prestige, bordering on international. Its been dubbed The Hunters, as tribute to Chris' combat master, Kraven. It's strictly black market based with various official companies acting as shells.
'Sergei's brother, Dmitri, has even aided in the company's growth by becoming the Chameleon, thanks to one of BLAKE's underground doctors/scientists — one Professor Miles Warren,' Luke thought. 'It's actually incredibly ingenious, honestly, but I suppose that should be given. Most forget that, though the quiet type, Chris Martin is still incredibly smart. He technically has a genius level IQ, though he's built like a tank.
'His ability to optimize his mindset through the sudden creation of tragedy in his past via anti-temporal energy makes him incredibly powerful, though the limitation is he has to be old enough to conquer the effects of said tragedy. And the off-putting consequence is that that tragedy gets recognized by time itself and becomes an actual event in history.
'As such, the feelings of said event are genuine, which is why he hates HYDRA and HIVE."
'The ability itself is quite broken. One of the other effects of the ability is that he can generate a superpower for himself. The offshoot is that reality generates a cause, which tends to be a great tragedy of sorts as justification — It's essentially an ability of causality and fate—binding to tragedy. The limit is that the superpower has to be plausible for him to possess.'
Luke decided he won't think too much on the explanation Chris gave for his ability. Even to a genius like him, the headache that was coming on from thinking on this was… Severe.
'With Lucas and the Defenders defending Hell's Kitchen, the Hand has receded a bit, likely bolstering their numbers in preparation to attack once more,' Luke thought of his eldest brother's situation. 'It's not like he's asked for help and Hell's Kitchen has achieved a hesitant period of peace. He's even managed to get Black Cat to act as a double agent into the Hand; set up her 'betrayal' and now there's an inside man in the Hand feeding him info.
'It's really brilliant, though Felicity seems to be playing both Bucky and my brother on a spittle… That or they're in a throuple…They're definitely in a throuple. Lucas is too intelligent to be played by anyone…That thought is…unomfortable…,' Luke cringed at the thought before relaxing his facial muscles. Shaking the thoughts away, Luke changed the direction of his thoughts. 'The Goblin has also joined the Defenders, more so as an honorary member than anything, given Harry spending much of his hero time helping out the Spider and most of his time as Harry Osborn running Oscorp since his father's hiatus, dating Gwen or just hanging out with me or Peter.
'I will say having Goblin as an ally is much better than foe, even if he wouldn't have been my foe. I said Spider-Man needed growth — not that his writers needed to take control of this story.'
Luke shivered at the thought. That would be nightmare fuel. No one needed that level of character hatred.
He genuinely wondered why Spider-Man's writers hated him so much. He wouldn't wish that on his worst enemy… Probably. Maybe. Possibly.
Widening his eyes, Luke had suddenly remembered something.
'My date with Ororo is tonight. What am I going to wear? Where am I going to take her?' He internally began panicking before thinking up what he knew about Storm in the comics from the memories of the Master. 'I know Ultimate Storm likes yams and Earth-61609 likes pasta, though that last one was mostly fanon.
'Nonetheless, I should find a nice pasta place that does candied yams,' as Luke looked up a specific place, called and made an appointment, he felt the car stop.
Noticing that they weren't at their destination, he suddenly had a faint fore-sense of danger. Nothing life-threatening but definitely sourced with ill-intent.
"Tristan?" Luke questioned his driver who had already begun unbuckling his seat. "Could you handle the specially armed, foolish battalion of a firing squad ahead of us?"
"On it, boss," Tristan said, already exiting the car, even as the bullets and energy beam weapons began firing.
"OMNIS, activate armoured mode," Luke said calmly, drinking a margarita as the car became highly armoured.
[Command Acknowledge. Activating… Armoured Mode].
[Armoured Mode Reference Image]:
'I installed armoured mode on all our vehicles. This one technically was bought for Tristan, but as my Mercedes is currently getting an upgrade and repair, so we had to use Tristan's car to get me to this meeting,' Luke thought calmly as bodies went flying, golden beams tore bodies apart and the sickening sound of bones and muscles being physically torn apart sounded even to inside the car. 'After numerous shooters have tried killing me and mine ever since many corporations have reviewed the footage from the battle near X-Manor — likely HYDRA as I'm certain SHIELD had taken all records of that footage from the public— they've even tried outing me as a mutant. I, of course, went public with me being both a mutant and mutate before they could even gain control of the narrative, but that only quelled 33% of the 43% those corps who has decided to hate on me. They've even tried to drop my stocks and drop out of deals and contracts.
'Of course, when they tried this, OMNIS completely obliterated them, discreetly siphoning their stocks, funds, erasing their databases and all that made them prevalent in the modern world… Among other things. It was all done discretely and untraceable, so the only clue that anyone had that it was me was the common denominator that is breaking a deal with me or the company.
'This made all others fear what happens when they break deals with or attacked BLAKE H.T Industries — This has given the Master a fearsome reputation, which has actually opened up many doors.'
"Aah!" A scream of agony was swallowed by the wind as a man was seen flying off the ledge of the expressway, falling to the traffic below.
'Of course, not everyone is happy with me being half mutant and various groups have sent assassins, hitmen and firing squads after me,' Luke thought with amusement, a sadistic glint in his eyes as he thought what happened to those foolish individuals. 'They never made it home to their families, unfortunately.'
As Tristan entered the car free of any injury, with the only proof of combat being the metallic scent of blood clinging to his clothes, he said nothing as he turned off Armoured Mode and continued driving.
As they passed the bodies, though even Luke had to double take at the gruesome way they were torn apart. Guts and ribs strewn across the asphalt as bones and upper bodies were separated from lower bodies and joints. Muscle fibers and entire body parts were burnt as if by a meticulous beam of some sort.
'This guy…,' Luke thought, looking at Tristan from the backseat.
'His ocular beam transforms psionic energy into thermal, intense ocular beams and is strong enough to split reinforced titanium steel, yet he chooses to be meticulous and tone down his beam so that it's merely surface burning flesh or cutting partway through bone — just so he can physically kill them himself.
'It probably doesn't help that he can manipulate that same psionic energy to empower his limbs, making him faster, stronger and more durable than the average suer soldier, almost as physically gifted as I was before I got my upgrade before the Master had ditched Earth.
'How ruthlessly quaint.'
The drive continued and Luke's mind traversed to another topic.
'The contracts with the EnerGenesis spheres have brought in a lot of money,' Luke thought to himself. 'As we are now, we have more money than a medium tier country, and then some.
'Also, various landfills and waste dumps across the US have been transformed into renewable energy sources and resource sites. As of right now, 42% of wastefields across the US have been transformed into oil — 25% of which has been claimed by BLAKE Industries. An additional 16% has been turned into nickel and cobalt reserves and another 22% has had its waste turned into either solid municipal waste to be used and turned into clean electricity or heat or refined biomass to be used to create more plantlife on Earth.
'That's 80% cleaner a country. Our contracts with Russia and China as well as the UN have also given us much revenue.'
This thought brought a smile to Luke's face. He was certain this would make Lewis happy, no doubt. Maybe he should plan a party for the return of the Master. Maybe he could invite Ororo?
'The facilities I'm having built around the world as well as the University I'm building for both man and mutant is probably another reason I'm being targeted but I am still getting them done,' Luke continued on with his thoughts. 'Within another year, nearly 100% of the waste dumps across America will be sources of renewable energies — some have already been cleansed and turned into solar panel spots — many of these we already own.
'Furthermore, the University of Caledon at Ontario will be up and running in even less time.'
"It feels like it's all coming together. The Master would be proud," Luke muttered to himself, smiling.
"We're here." Tristan said, interrupting Luke's thoughts, as they were pulling up to a tall building. Luke looked out the window to see an impressive building.
The Triskelion.
Headquarters of S.H.I.E.L.D.
[The Triskelon, HQ of SHIELD Reference Image]:
"We have arrived," Luke's grin widened. "Nick Fury… Looks like we finally will be meeting in-person."