"You might wonder why I started my speech today with such an ominous quote." Ryan continued. The viewers around the world gulped their saliva as they waited for him to continue. "I just thought it would be awesome."
"Boo! " An Indian boy named Akshat watching from his country exclaimed as Ryan opened his speech with a bad joke.
Tony chuckled as he watched the broadcast on his holographic projection while guarding the summit place in Washington in his Iron Man armor. "Kek. That's what I would've done too."
Pepper admonish him through the video call, "It's because he's been spending waaayy to much time with you."
"What made me too likable? I wasn't the one who did that."
Pepper rolled her eyes by the vanity of her husband.
Ryan smirked and didn't continue explaining the quote, instead he showed an image to the conference hall and also to the broadcast. It's an image of two desolate planets with a few traces of civilization inside the planet.
"The two planets here are called Morag, and the other one is called Maveth." He said while pointing to the planets.
Maveth's images showed the sandstorm and harsh climate inside the planet, with the sun coming out every 6 months at a time. Morag was a submerged planet with numerous mutated, dangerous aquatic animals that could easily kill a human being with one bite.
"For the visitors, we humans have a quote. 'Those that fail to learn from history…are doomed to repeat it.' So today, I'll give you a brief history lesson before I start."
Centurion Gia nodded when she heard the quote. "The one who strings these sentences together must be a wise man." She muttered to herself. As an inhabitant of the galactic society, Gia was curious about what Ryan Knight, the true world leader by her standard, wanted to do with showing the dead planet images.
"Let's talk about Morag first." Ryan said and showed a picture of the planet before it turned into a water planet.
"What the-" President Ellis widened his eyes in shock. The trees, the seas, the society, all of them…looked like the Earth! Not only him, but most of the world leaders there were also shocked by the images!
"This picture was taken 5000 years ago. Luckily, I stumbled onto the picture of the planet from someone called the Collector. He's a nice guy. He showed me his entire collection when I visited him." Ryan said while adorning a look of innocent gratitude on his face, that people really thought he had a nice chat with the Collector.
Right now, Tivan is still banging on the glass display of his collection case as he was trapped inside of it—swearing and screaming bloody murder about wanting to kill the people who took all his stuffs. Gia chuckled as she was clear on the matter, but the other people watching Ryan's speech didn't.
"Based on the Collector's record, the entire civilization in Morag was destroyed overnight, turning their harmonious society into a dangerous planet filled with mutated creatures now. Anyone here could guess what happened to them?"
Deep inside their heart, the scientist, the politicians, and people from everyday lives already know the answer. But they couldn't bring themselves to get the word out.
"I will tell you, as this isn't a Q and A. The intelligent species in Planet Morag created a weapon and shot it against each other 5000 years ago, while humans were still in the beginning stage of civilization." He said bluntly.
"For so long, the inhabitants of Morag couldn't achieve unity and fought against another member of their species, until one day…. their world leaders decided to take a drastic action and completely destroy the enemy, while the enemy also thought about the same thing."
"Sounds familiar?" Ryan said and showed the video of nuclear weapons being shot out by various government in the world for their tests. The whole world was silent as they watched the videos.
Ryan put the topic aside and turned the crowd's attention to the other planet, Maveth.
"In Latin, Maveth means death. A fitting name for the planet." Ryan continued.
"Once, 9 different civilizations existed on the planet. And all of them lived in harmony, away from each other. Each civilization there progressed rapidly until they reached the start of the interstellar age on their own efforts."
Peter Parker who was watching the show from Mars asked to himself, "So why did they die?"
As if responding to Peter, Ryan replied, "The civilizations here died because of a unique thing. They died because of their ideologies."
"How do you know all this?" Gia blurted out unconsciously, causing the camera to focus on her.
"Simple. I met with a witness." Ryan replied, pulling the focus back to him and showed his trip to Maveth. The other world leaders who didn't attend the summit gritted their teeth as they saw the American already set foot into the interstellar era while all they could do was watch.
"She's really pretty." Foggy Nelson muttered unconsciously.
Karen rolled her eyes, "Really? That's what you're focusing on?"
"What? She is the answer to an age-old question. Is other alien life fuckab-"
"Shhh Foggy, I wanna hear the tv." Matt interjected quickly before Foggy could finish. Luckily Karen wasn't paying much attention to Foggy, otherwise she wouldn't talk to him for weeks.
[Flashback to Maveth.]
"So, you're the Hydra God." Ryan muttered as he came face to face with the parasitic monster, Hive.
"And who might you be…?" Hive asked in a polite tone. "Doesn't matter, your body has come at the right time. My current one…is reaching its expiry date."
Hive always has a polite personality. That's why he would try to convince the people he wants to take over to believe in his cause.
"Pfft- As if I will let another man enter the most precious part of my body." Ryan chuckled. Further away from Ryan, the stranded NASA astronaut watched Ryan's meeting with the monster in horror.
"RUN!" He screamed to warn Ryan. But Ryan ignored him.
"Alveus, right?" Ryan asked. "My name is Ryan Knight. I got to say, I admire your legacy on Earth. Even thousands of years later, your disciples/cult still worships you and follows your teachings. They still believe that once you return, Earth will receive the peace it deserves."
When the Kree rogue organization came to Earth to experiment on humans before, one of their subjects was a Mayan hunter-gatherer who ran afoul of the Reapers' ship shortly after it crash-landed in Mesoamerica.
After his terrigenesis process, Alveus' ability was feared by the Kree, therefore they threw him into the monolith to get rid of him. There, Alveus stumbled into the advanced civilization on the planet. He then watched for himself about how the civilization came to be destroyed.
Ryan and the Hive talked for a long time amidst the stranded astronaut's confusion.
"There used to be nine cities on this planet. The beings who lived there were fairly advanced, but they feared change. They were easily divided. They warred among themselves, destroying their entire race. They had a chance to become something great, something beautiful, but in the end..." He shook his head when he finished his words.
Ryan nodded at Hive's words. The same thing was happening to Earth right now. Minutes turned to hours, and it's been half a day since Ryan and the Hive started talking.
After he accidentally stumbled into the way back to Earth, Alveus led the other Inhumans to chase the Kree from Earth who sought to conquer the galaxy using the Inhuman as soldiers, giving birth to the first generation of Inhuman heroes.
However, as he saw the world of Maveth being destroyed by their own doings, he sought to unite the world under a new 'collective.'
The other Inhumans grew fearful of his ambition and banished him back to Maveth. They also kept the Monolith away from Hive's disciples so they couldn't bring him back. All they could do was to send a sacrificial offering to Hive after a period of struggle with the others. History became so twisted that the Hydra cult was born by the disciples who wanted to bring Hive back to Earth.
"For someone from the primitive Era of humanity, you had a noble intention of uniting the world before anyone else. And, you still do." Ryan said, feeling a bit of sadness for Alveus.
Ryan continued, "True. Without unity, we will destroy ourselves. True, without understanding each other, we will never achieve peace. As long as we can't understand one another, an innate fear of another human being will always be there."
"But. The best thing about humans is. They always try to do better."
"Alveus. You've struggled for a long time, keeping such a noble intention as the last anchor to your sanity. To unite the Earth under one banner."
From Ryan's feet, an intricate magic circuit appeared, growing untill it passed more than 1 kilometer in range.
"You can rest now. Your ambition has been passed on…To me. I won't let humanity go extinct, as the people on this planet did."
"What are you doing?" Hive asked, his voice was still calm despite the fear in his soul.
"I'm giving you peace." Ryan said, and activated the magic spell to kill the Hive once and for all. The amalgamation of billions of viruses that made out of Hive's entire being suddenly froze.
"NO NO NO—I NEED TO GO BACK!!!" Hive yelled for the first time and tried to take over Ryan's body forcefully. But, his entire being was frozen in its place. An illusionary Shinigami appeared from behind Ryan with a knife in his mouth.
"NOOOO! STOOOOOP!!!" Hive begged. The Shinigami then pulled his soul from his body, leaving every cell to die out instantly. His soul form was a hive of viruses as he had long lost his human soul.
"Goodbye. Alveus." Ryan muttered as the Shinigami pulled the Hydra god to the afterlife, once and for all.
[Flashback Ends]
"Maveth was once a home to a paradisiacal civilization before being reduced to a barren wasteland by climatic disaster and deleterious warring between the planet's nine major cities. The war started… when they found out that they weren't alone in the universe."
Ryan had scoured the entire planet and researched the archeological remnant of the civilization to find out the cause of the war.
"Some wanted to hide. Some wanted to benefit from other advanced civilizations. Some wanted to control the entire planet before they waged war on the galaxy." Ryan explained.
"They couldn't achieve what was necessary for entering the interstellar age. Unity."
A pin drop silence occurred to the entire world. People have been holding their breath when Ryan explained about the situation of these two planets.
"So, I ask you today. In our path to the interstellar era, should we take a lesson from these two planets? Or continue on the same path we always took? Or should we wait for a savior like Alveus to do our job for us?"
Reed Richard let out a sigh after thinking deeply about it for a while. "So that's why he'd been working like a madman to prepare for the world summit."
"Salvation at the hands of others was never true. To truly achieve salvation for our species, we ourselves need to change our ways." Ryan continued.
T'Chaka, King of Wakanda, sat in the middle part of the summit hall. Ryan's history lesson had hit him in his core. From the Inhuman saving the world thousands of years ago, to the fall of Maveth and Morag, he has been listening to every single one of Ryan's words intently.
"He wasn't a conqueror." T'Chaka muttered to himself as he looked at Ryan. "He is a naïve kid who wants the world to do better." He stared at the One World United Project documents in front of him. He knew he had special treatment to come to the summit without signing it because Ryan and Bast knew each other.
"To open up Wakanda… I guess it's time…" T'Chaka muttered. His son, T'Challa who'd been sitting next to him widened his eyes in shock after hearing his father's proclamations. However, he didn't say anything and listened intently to what Ryan had to say next.
"He is AWESOME!" Shuri said while watching Ryan from the holographic screen in her lab in Wakanda.
"Okay, enough with the heavy part of the speech." Ryan changed the mood with an excited tone.
"Today, we have almost managed to achieve unity in our society. We just needed a little bit of push before we truly could welcome the interstellar era with open arms."
The attendee of the meeting may be tempted with the prospect of spaceship designs that Ryan promised and safety to explore our solar system. Some even schemed to exit the project after they got what they wanted – but many of those people would change after today.
As representatives from the galactic civilization, Dezan and Gia knew it would be hard to truly control the people once they had entered the interstellar era. They respected Ryan to not wantonly push the people of his species toward outer space for the sake of resources or getting advanced technology to be brought back to their species.
What Ryan had done in his trip to the galaxy, was learning.
…
As Ryan gave his speech, a blue-skin conqueror gave his utmost attention to hear what Ryan had to say.
"Foolish." Kang muttered. "Human's will never change on their own."
In the future he came from, humans had struggled to enter the interstellar era. But once they did, the human species became the master of the cosmos, master of space, and master of time.
However, they did so after a lot of conflicts between the members of the species. They crawled their ways toward a more ethical society, never learning from their mistakes.
To truly change humanity's fate, Kang knew he had to put them all under his rule.
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"Set the coordinate to Washington. It's time for me to take over." Kang said while looking at Ryan's figure on the screen.
"I expected more from you." He said in disappointment.