Chapter 240
A/N: Ninja Art: Time-Skip-No-Jutsu!!!
Chapter: 240
–1 year later–
I was standing in an airlock with Tony and Andrea. No one else was around. Tony didn’t want anyone interrupting his breakthrough when we commenced our live test.
“Are you sure this is a good idea, Tony?” I asked him skeptically. He was looking out the small glass window through the door and grinning to himself like a loon. I knew that he couldn't wait to get out there.
What was on the other side of the door?
The Moon. We were literally standing in our own Moonbase.
A base that had actually been pretty easy to build all things considered. All it took was me creating a portal to the Moon followed by Tony and Andrea sending a whole lot of drones though. The entire process was fully automated. The drones were able to build a decent sized Moonbase in the span of a month.
“Nope! I'm not sure at all! That’s what makes it so interesting!” He said while grinning.
I sighed at his recklessness. Even though I was here to revive him if this goes wrong, this is still a dumb idea. He has to know that dying hurts, right? “And the reason you didn’t think about testing this out before is because…?” I trailed off.
“Don't bother. I tried to talk him out of this, but he didn't listen.” Andrea said while folding her arms.
Tony held a syringe in his hand. It was filled with a liquid that glowed a mixture of green and orange. “It’s more exciting this way!” He stuck the syringe in his arm. He hit the plunger and grit his teeth as the serum was injected into him.
Tony had insisted that he be the first person to use the new serum, completely forgoing the typical volunteer testing phase. He didn’t even bother testing this on animals yet because he didn't want to accidentally create some super powered rodents.
The science of what went into the serum was well over my head, but I at least know it was a combination of Extremis, Hulk Serum and a few other special additions that Andrea had added. She had dated Bruce Banner back in her home universe and learned quite a bit from him there.
They both wanted this serum to be the next stage of Human evolution. If it worked, it certainly could be. Andrea and I took a step back in case Tony ended up suddenly combusting or anything.
Tony’s skin turned orange and started steaming! The veins under his skin started glowing bright green as well!
“Is that supposed to happen?” I whispered to Andrea.
She glanced at Tony nervously. “He’s the first ever test subject, so I have no idea!”
“Didn't you help design like half the serum!?” I asked her.
“Yeah, and I wanted to test it on animals first. Not people!” Andrea told me.
“Ok, this fucking burns!” Tony groaned in pain as he hunched over. “We might need to tweak the serum a bit more to add some painkillers!”
Despite the pain of having his entire body in the process of fundamentally evolving, he was still completely cognizant. Tony’s willpower was always impressive. He leaned against the reinforced steel wall and took deep breaths in and out. I could see and hear the muscles underneath his boiling skin bulging and tearing as they rebuilt themselves. There were some pretty disgusting cracking noises as all of his bones fractured and put themselves back together stronger next.
This wasn't a pleasant process to watch.
My Purger of Darkness was already on both my wrists and on standby in case something went wrong. Thankfully, nothing did.
After a few minutes Tony’s orange skin stopped steaming and his veins became invisible again. He was still taking some ragged breaths, but he didn’t look like he was in a lot of pain anymore. I couldn't use my Sacred Gear to lessen his pain. That would ruin this whole dumb experiment.
“I would like to put it on the record that my brother is an idiot.” Andrea said as Tony straightened himself up. His clothing was soaked in sweat, but he otherwise looked alright.
Tony ignored her comment and instead was grinning to himself in excitement. “Holy shit! It worked. It actually worked! I feel amazing!” He started hopping up and down excitedly.
THUNK!
“OW!” He must have temporarily forgotten we were still on the Moon in his excitement. He hopped too high and just smacked his head on the ceiling. That thunk sounded painful. The fact that he's still conscious after smacking his head against a solid steel ceiling is a good sign. His bone density must have been greatly increased! Tony didn’t look any different than he did before, but all the changes were supposed to be internal.
“Alright, Jarvis! Start venting the atmosphere in here! Daddy wants to walk on the Moon!” Tony said cheerfully.
“I’m not sure that’s wise, Sir…” Jarvis advised us over the intercom. “There are other ways to test out if your serum lets you survive in a vacuum for prolonged periods of time.”
“I agree with Jarvis.” Andrea added. “This is a dumb idea and you're making yourself look like Reed Richards right now.” Andrea said to Tony.
Oof, that was a low blow! Reed Richards wasn’t exactly well spoken of in the scientific community right now.
Tony pouted at his sister. “Hey! I resent that! I actually triple checked MY formula before injecting myself with it!” Tony said.
“It's OUR formula, and I quadruple checked it!” Andrea snarked back.
Tony calmed down a bit. “Ok, sorry. Yes, it's OUR formula.” He said while she nodded her head. “But please don't compare me to Reed Richards. I’m way smarter than that guy…” He muttered.
“Of course you are, Tony. Your technology actually works the way you intend it to.” I told him. That wasn't even a question for me at this point. In only a year he had created his own Moonbase and a Spaceship that could travel back and forth to it in only a few hours!
“Maybe that's not always a good thing. Being reckless did give Reed and his whole crew awesome super powers.” Andrea giggled.
“Correction…His crew got awesome powers. Reed's stretchy powers are incredibly lame.” Tony said.
Andrea snickered at Tony. “You're just jealous that Richards got the ability to stretch every single part of his body. EVERY part…” We all understood what Andrea was hinting at. I wasn’t attracted to men, but even I had to admit Susan Storm was a lucky girl…
He turned to me pleadingly. “Come one, Layla! You gotta give me super penis powers too! How could you give them to a loser like Reed Richards and not your best bro!?” Tony whined at me.
I sputtered at him indignantly. This stupid rumor was never going to go away! “I've said it before, I had nothing to do with the Fantastic Four getting their powers!” I told him for what felt like the tenth time so far! “I can't give you super penis powers! I can only turn people into Angels!”
I sighed…
…
Before the infamous spaceship accident, Reed Richards wasn’t well known globally. He had never accomplished anything really noteworthy in the scientific community. He was mostly skating by with small but innovative patents. Nothing too flashy or on par with Tony though at this point.
From the rumors I've heard, Reed Richards is actually a pretty jealous individual when it comes to academics. He has wanted to prove himself the true smartest man in the world for a while now.
When Tony and I jointly announced ou4 businesses were going into space, Reed scrambled to try and outdo Tony by building a spaceship faster.
[If there’s one thing you don’t want to rush, it’s building a spaceship. There's never too many redundancies.]
The Challenger shuttle blowing up taught us all that…
Reed clearly never got that message. Somehow, he quickly got the funding he needed from investors to build his own spaceship. In order to beat out Tony, Reed had to cut a lot of corners.
A lot of corners…
When other experts studied the ship later, they were all amazed it didn’t immediately blow up at launch.
Once his ship could fly, Reed immediately hopped aboard with his best friend Ben, his girlfriend Susan, and her younger brother Johnny. The four of them took a test flight into the upper atmosphere. That’s where they encountered a random cosmic storm. With my Meta Knowledge, I obviously knew that was the start of the Fantastic Four. It was where they got their powers.
I was curious and decided to witness the event live–from space. It went pretty much how it did in the movie. I watched from afar as a cosmic cloud randomly appeared out of nowhere and engulfed their whole Spaceship. Everyone on board was knocked unconscious. Unlike the movie, the ship in this Universe was a rush job. And not just when it came to insulation.
The ship stabilizers failed and the ship was knocked out of orbit and started falling back towards Earth. I had to fly in and catch the damn thing myself! It was heavy as hell!
If I hadn't been there to catch it, the Fantastic Four would have all died for sure. I then had to fly the whole ship all the way back down to the ground.
A few days later, the four of them woke up in a hospital and ended up exposing their new powers to the world. Everyone incorrectly assumed that I had something to do with it. I now get tons of emails every day from people asking me to give them powers too!
My answer has obviously been no to everyone.
Another difference from canon, Victor Von Doom never got on the ship. I had stepped in to prevent that. I played to the man’s ego and convinced him that he was too important to risk his life in an untested spaceship. Doom was Reed’s biggest investor and part of me suspected Doom only invested in Reed’s research to try and steal Reed’s girlfriend away from him. I couldn't exactly blame the guy, Susan Storm was a genius and she was ridiculously hot.
So yeah, I had saved the Fantastic Four and prevented the creation of Doctor Doom. At least, for a little while. I’m pretty sure Doom will still become a villain at some point, but he wouldn't have Cosmic Space powers now at least. Penemue had already found a few new Fallcorp employees secretly on his payroll. We had no idea what he was up to for now.
…
Tony walked over to a nearby console and started typing the sequence to manually open the airlock. He turned to Andrea and me and grinned at us. “Here we go!” He said while pressing the final button.
The air started to get sucked from the room as the depressurization sequence started. A second later, we were standing in a vacuum. I glanced over at Tony and he smirked at me. His body hadn't immediately exploded, so that was a good sign.
The door in front of us opened and we stepped out onto the Moon's surface. None of us were wearing spacesuits...
I was fine because I was an Angel, and Andrea was the same as an Asgardian. I don't know how long they can survive in a vacuum, but in the MCU Thor was able to drift in space for days if not weeks.
I had removed my blessing from him before we got here. A few moments ago he was a completely regular human, and now with the help of their serum he was literally standing on the Moon's surface without wearing a spacesuit!
I pulled my phone out of my inventory and started recording. I pointed the camera over at Tony.
This was truly an amazing achievement. The serum officially worked. Not only did it enhance the human body so that they could survive in reduced or enhanced gravity, but it also allowed them to survive in a vacuum environment. We were in the process of figuring out exactly how long Tony could survive though.
I filmed Tony as he hopped around in the lower gravity for around 30 minutes. The grin never left his face the whole time. He actually turned towards me and Andrea a few times and tried to talk to us before he remembered there was no air on the Moon to talk with. I laughed when he tried to do the ‘Moonwalk’ on the actual Moon and ended up stumbling over on his ass.
It was only another half hour later that Tony’s smile vanished and a small frown appeared on his face. He signaled over to us that he was heading back towards the base. We followed after him and entered the airlock. Air filled back into the small airlock and Tony took a deep breath!
“Wow, that was close! I felt like I was almost out of air at the end there. How long were we out on the Moon? 15 minutes? 20 minutes?” He asked me.
I turned my phone and showed Tony the timestamp on the video. “We were out there an hour Tony! You were able to survive in a vacuum for a whole hour.”
Tony looked shocked for a second before he cheered. “Hell yeah!” The door on the other side opened up and we walked into the space station.
“Congratulations, Sir and Mams! You have done it!”
“Thank you, Jarvis.” Andrea said as she walked over to a nearby mini-fridge. It was filled with bottled beers, because of course Tony would want to drink on the Moon. She tossed a bottle to Tony and I while popping her own beer open. “We just saved the world and they don’t even know it yet! Cheers!”
“You two are definitely going to win a Nobel prize when we officially announce the serum.” I said while sipping on my own beer. This was a celebration so I did my best not to grimace. I was not a beer girl…
“Hell yeah we are! We obviously don’t need the money, but I’d love to rub the prize into some faces.” Tony said with a grin.
The important thing was that the serum worked. Now we just needed to start mass producing it and distributing it to the people of both Earths. When the two world’s recombined in a few more years, no one would die! Except, probably a lot of animals, we were still working on a solution for that.
{Quest Complete! You have Leveled up x5!}
There it is! My oldest quest was officially completed!
I set my bottle down and leaned back on the couch. I sighed in relief. That was one of the biggest tasks that had been hanging over my head all this time. Now I was free to focus on other things again. Such as–
“So, Layla… How are the girls?” Tony asked me, snapping me out of my thoughts.
“Which ones?” I asked him. There were many girls in my life now.
“The newest ones.” Tony said with a laugh.
“My girls are amazing! They are so beautiful and perfect!” I said fondly. Tony and Andrea both smiled, they were truly happy for me.
“Miss Layla, you’ve received a message from Earth. Miss Romanoff would like to know if you will be returning for dinner?” Jarvis spoke up over the speakers in the room.
“Yeah, you can tell her I’ll be back in a few minutes after I drop off Tony and Andrea.” I turned to them. “Unless you two want to come over for dinner too! Are we done celebrating?”
Tony stood up and playfully scoffed. “Of course we’re not done celebrating! Pepper and I will fly over. Let's have a party!”
“That sounds great! I’ll come over too. Would you mind if I brought Bruce?” Andrea asked hesitantly. Yes, they were now a thing. A few months ago she had sought him out and explained that she was his lover from a parallel world. I imagined that it was weird for both of them at first, but Bruce Banner and Andrea were currently a thing. If the Hulk was also involved, then I didn't want to know…
“As long as Bruce takes his meds beforehand then it’s fine.” We had specially designed meds that could keep him calm no matter what. While he was under them, he could not change into the Hulk unless he took heavy damage. It’s not that I didn’t trust him, I just didn’t want to risk the Hulk around any of my girls. Bruce completely understood, he was actually a pretty chill guy.
I opened two separate portals. Tony and Andrea stepped through and they headed home for now to regroup before the party later tonight.
I opened a third portal to my own penthouse and stepped through. The living room was currently empty, but I expected that. Most of everyone’s time was spent in a different section of our home these days. I walked down the hall to where I sensed everyone. At the end of the hallway was an important room that had more wards and protections placed on it than pretty much anywhere else on the planet.
I opened the door and smiled at everyone inside. Rias and Sona were sitting at a small table in the corner having a fierce chess match. They both gave me a small smile when I walked in.
Hestia was tending to a nearby fireplace while chatting with Frigga who was sitting in a comfy chair. Artemis was hovering nearby, still dressed in her french maid outfit. I’m pretty sure she actually enjoyed wearing it at this point.
My eyes finally traveled to the end of the room. Natasha was sitting with Heather and Asia. Each of them were in their own rocking chairs. In their arms, were the three newest members of our household and family. All three of them were born only a few months ago.
“How are the three little Angels?” I asked Natasha while walking over.
Natasha was cooing at the tiny baby in her arms who giggled back at her. “They are all perfect. It’s almost time for their naps though.”
“Lets tuck them in then for a nap. Thanks for watching over them.” I said to the three of them.
“They’re all my baby sisters! Of course I'll watch over them.” Heather said. She gently placed the baby in her arms down in the nearest crib.
“It was no problem, Layla. They’re my nieces and I love them all.” Asia added.
I have three baby daughters now…
After a certain night with Hela, Rias, and Sona a year ago, a few of us woke up in the morning with some surprises growing inside of us…
Well, they weren't actually surprises considering that had been the intention of the night. It was only a surprise because Supernatural beings were supposed to have much lower fertility rates than mortals.
The youngest of my children was Lia Gremory. She was the daughter of Rias and I. Born from Rias. She was adorable with her big purple eyes and her little toughs of red hair that were starting to grow in.
The second youngest was Sia Sitri. Sona and Rias actually gave birth on the same day, and decided to give the ‘twin girls’ similar names. She was the daughter of Sona and I. Sona had given birth to her of course.
The final little girl was the oldest and her ‘mother’ was me. Hela had gotten pretty frisky that night and she ended up actually knocking me up. A year later, I gave birth to Hilga Heladottir. Our daughter, the Crown Princess and Heiress to the throne of Asgard. Hela dropped by almost every single day to check up on her. She didn’t want Hilga anywhere near Asgard with the war about to kick off any day now.
The three of them were all very well behaved little Angels. It didn't take them long to close their eyes and fall asleep after we tucked them all in. I waved my hand and a soundproof barrier manifested over all three cribs so that the babies can sleep without being woken up.
I kissed Natasha on the cheek and held her hand as we walked over and sat down on a nearby couch. I leaned my head on her shoulder. “Today was an amazing day, we did it! The Stark Serum works!” I told her.
Natasha kissed the top of my head. “That’s amazing! When’s the celebration party?”
“Um, it's here…tonight.” I said.
Natasha sighed and bopped the top of my head. “That’s something you're supposed to tell us as soon as you walk in! We only have a few hours to prepare now.” She stood up and walked over towards Hestia and Artemis so they could start putting tonight together. Both goddesses turned and gave me the stink eye for making them prepare a party so quickly.
XXX
What are Layla’s stats post time skip? Find out next time on Dragonball – er – I mean next time on The Fallen Gamer!