(I'm. Back.)
-Strucker Castle-
"What are you going to do when we meet him?" Pietro asked teasingly.
"Shut up." Wanda shut him down before he could go any further.
"I'm just saying. He already has a fiance." Pietro said to remind Wanda as her crush on Ryan Knight was on the brink of obsession before this.
Actually she was crushing on Ryan similar to ⅓ of all teenage girls in the whole world – but Pietro didn't know that. All he knows is that his sister has an unhealthy obsession with the guy.
She has his posters, gone to every single one of his movies, binge watched his television series fanatically, and learned the lyrics to all the songs he had produced. She is basically a Kpop-stan, with her idol being Ryan Knight.
"Kids. He is right in front of you." Rhodes said as he shot down several Hydra agents using his shoulder machine gun.
He deeply worries about the twins inside that he didn't separate from them at all.
'No training. Not looking where he ran. Just throwing away her blast aimlessly. No bulletproof clothes. These kids are seeking death here.'
Rhodes landed next to the twins and pointed his finger at Pietro's face. "Look where you run. A stray bullet can hit you anytime they want. You might be fast but you're not invulnerable."
Pietro grimaced as Rhodes reminded him of the guards inside the refugee centre that would always nag at him when he did something wrong.
"Pietro, how do I look?" Suddenly Wanda called him out after fixing her hair and her clothing.
"You didn't listen to anything I said huh."
Rhodes retracted his helmet and waited for Ryan. He knew the kids wouldn't listen to him, that's why he planned to ask Ryan for a favour.
'They desperately need training. For their own safety.' he thought.
The door in front of the trio opened, revealing Ryan Knight figure and Gwen who stood beside him.
"Rod. such a small world. It's so funny, you never know when you're going to run into someone you know in strange places."
With a grin, Ryan walked to Rhodes for a handshake.
"Haha." Rhodes laughed dryly. "Don't abuse your position as the boss to make people laugh at your lame jokes."
"I think that's pretty funny. Is it not?" Ryan said sadly. Gwen shook her head at his side and Pietro chuckled to himself.
"I-I think it's pretty funny." Wanda said out loud, causing Ryan to turn toward her. Her cheek flushed red and she couldn't look Ryan in the eyes.
It's a secret from Pietro, but she felt a sense of familiarity when she saw him in ways that an idol couldn't give – or any other human could. The sense of alienation against other humans that was imposed against her didn't kick in with him.
"Hello again, Wanda. Pietro."
"H-Hello (voice break.) Ehem Ehem.." Pietro cleared his throat before he started again. "Hello sir." Pietro replied in a normal voice this time.
Ryan gestured to them to come near him.
Using his technopathy ability, he searches for the nanites inside the twin. He has to place his hand on the twin's neck, causing Pietro to tease as he watches his sister squirming in embarrassment.
"I think I can remove the bomb after a simple adjustment on my suit."
Gwen walked toward Wanda and patted her head, "it must've been hard on you." She had retracted her helmet, showing a sincere concern to Wanda. The witch lowered her head and replied, "Yes…it has."
Being a human lab rat has been hard on the twins and those involved. It was lucky for them that Strucker didn't allow his test subjects to be defiled, otherwise a pretty girl like Wanda would have been harassed every day.
Not that they could do anything to the test subjects with Ryan monitoring their every move.
"Calibration complete." ALBUS chimed in. Ryan used a simple magnetic wave that locked into the nanites frequency to pull them out of the twin's skin.
"Oh..that's nasty." Rhodes exclaimed as he saw black goo coming from the kid's neck. After the nanites were removed, Ryan threw the small dark mass toward the side of the room.
BOOOM
An explosion occurred, producing a gaping hole on the castle's walls.
"HOLY-" Rhodes' eyes shook after truly understanding the deep trouble the twins were in. if the nanites exploded while it was still inside the kids, there won't even be any corpse left to identify them.
Gwen hugged Wanda tightly to cheer her up. As she did that, Ryan walked to Pietro and patted him on his shoulder.
"I will make sure that you receive compensation for your distress."
"Sir- that's unnecessary."
"Don't worry. Strucker is a rich man. It's the least he can do after what he put you through."
"Let's go out now. This place gives me the creeps." Rhodes interjected. Ryan nodded and let Rhodes lead the way.
Ryan turned to a dark corner of the room as he walked by. "Black Panther. All of Strucker's prisoners are free?"
A dark figure walked out of the shadow and replied, " They are now. The battle here is done. We should go help the others at the next castle."
"It's fine. The battle there is also over." Ryan replied dismissing the panther's concern.
Rhodes, Wanda and Pietro widened their eyes when they heard Ryan's reply.
"So that's it? Hydra is dead?" Rhodes asked with a bright smile on his face.
"Not quite. They lost Zemo and the sceptre." Ryan explained with a poker face.
Zemo and ChenLu were now at another location, having a talk with Ryan's shadow clone. He planned to hide the sceptre's position until he was sure Thanos didn't do anything on the sceptre.
'It was pretty weird to think that Ultron's first impulse was to destroy Humanity after becoming self aware… Not that anyone won't do the same if they browsed the entire internet in a few seconds. But I need to make sure.'
He needed to hide it for safekeeping for now. After all, he didn't want the robot uprising to happen this time too, right? As they walk outside the castle, Wanda keeps stealing glances at Ryan without him noticing. But Gwen did.
Near Zemo's castle, the other Avengers were in a full scale panic mode.
"Ultron. Scan the nearby area. Use the same perimeter as the tesseract scanning." Tony said anxiously. Zemo and three of the Masters of Evil had disappeared. The Avengers were running around the area, trying to find them.
"Cap. Anything?" Natasha asked, her duplicates found the hidden exit that Zemo had passed through, even scanned the radioactive traces of ChenLu, but the trace had disappeared in thin air.
"Nothing. This is not good." Steve said anxiously. He knew the implications that were going to happen if Zemo was free. Soon, the world would fall into a chaotic era where super powered soldiers would be popping out one after another.
"Thor. That thing is Asgardian. Can you find it?" Natasha asked.
"I'm afraid not." Thor replied.
"Banner. Any results from the satellite?" Tony asked Banner who had gone back inside the Avenger Jet.
Banner pulled himself together to help the team after the Hulk's loses control. Fortunately, no civilian was injured in his rampage – except for Thor. But Hulk won't feel even one bit of guilt as Thor was his punching bag.
"No. Nothing." Banner replied.
"Damn it. I can almost see Ryan's condescending look when he know we've fucked it up." Ayala rummaged her hair in frustration.
"Language." Captain blurted out.
Others: …..
Captain: Oh my god, what have I done?
"Sam, where are you?" Captain America quickly asked, trying to avoid the backlash with everything he has.
"Oh we're not changing the topic. Language. Seriously?" Tony said sarcastically, his bad mood was lifted a bit from Captain's blunder. "Where is Sam anyway?" Tony flew by the place where Sam was fighting before, but the place was empty. Both Sam and the Songbird have disappeared.
"I will go there first." Rhodes said. Before Ryan could say anything, Rhodes shut him down. "You need to go back to the country Mr. President."
"Vice President."
"Whatever. Bring the kids with you. They are a danger to themselves the way they are now."
Rhodes picked up the Black Panther and flew toward Zemo's castle.
Gwen turned to Ryan and then to the twins. "Do you have a passport?"
The twins looked at each other and replied, "No."
Pietro spoke up, " We're grateful that you've saved us. But we don't think we want to go to America. This place is our home, and now we're finally able to help our country."
"That's a noble intention." Ryan nodded in agreement. "But as Rhodey said, you're a danger to yourselves now. Let me train you a bit. Just for 2 weeks. I promise I won't put wires on you to try to study you."
Ryan effectively addressed the twins' concern in his remarks. If they want to join the Avengers after that, then it would be up to them. They weren't potential dangers to society that needed to be met with prejudice. They were just kids who had awakened their powers, and now want to use the powers to help their people.
"Our powers aren't actually trainable you know?" Pietro said with a smirk. Inwardly, he already agreed to Ryan's offer, but he needed to make sure that they wouldn't be taken advantage of.
"Perhaps. But what I am focusing on is more on discipline and skills. Wanda needed to learn a lot now that she has awakened something that has been extinct for centuries."
"What is that?" Wanda asked with glittering eyes.
Suddenly, Rubeus Hagrid walked in and said in a British accent, "Yer a wizard Wanda."
"I'm a what?!"
"A wizard."
Ryan snapped his fingers, turning his appearance back to normal.
"What I mean is…You're a witch wanda."
Pietro was mind-blown, "IS THAT A SPELL. ARE YOU A WIZARD!?"
"I am not a witch. I never learned any spell." Wanda ignored Pietro.
"I know. What the enhancement did is connect you to a source of magic. Right now, you're only using the most basic of the magic skill, telepathy, and telekinesis."
Ryan controlled the soils and rocks around the area and spun them around the group of people there. Gwen raised her brows, wondering why Ryan chooses now to reveal his ability – not to mention to those he had just met.'
Wanda finally knew why she felt a sense of familiarity with Ryan that she didn't even have with Pietro. It's because he was the same as her – he could wield magic too.
"Also. I think my mother knows your mother." Ryan dropped a bomb in the conversation and opened up a portal to New York City.
…
-Marduk Temple-
"This place can hide the fluctuations of the sceptre. We can have a talk here without anyone bothering us."
Ryan led the duo – Zemo and ChenLu inside the temple to for a private conversation. He snapped his fingers, and rattan grew from the temple floor to create a chair for both of the visitors. Tea kettle and tea cups appeared out of thin air and its fragrant smell reminded ChenLu of his hometown.
"I don't care." ChenLu said and sat down on one of the chairs. He reached out to grab the tea cup and carried it near his nose.
' It's from my hometown.'
The smell was making ChenLu a bit nostalgic of his country. He hadn't been home in 30 years as part of the deal he had been forced to make. ChenLu just smelled the tea, but he didn't drink it. More accurately, he couldn't drink it.
Every food, poison, or even shit that entered his mouth will all be corroded until what was left was only dirt. His body acted as a radioactive furnace that was always filled with energy that he couldn't even die from starvation.
"Why are you dragging this out Ryan Knight!? What is YOUR purpose!?" Zemo growled at him.
"I have a proposition for you, if you're interested, you can sit. If you aren't, then it's time for you to leave."
Zemo scoffed, "I don't think you would ever let me leave."
"That's right."
Helpless, Zemo took a seat next to ChenLu.
"You can drink that tea. Don't worry about not being able to taste it." Ryan said to ChenLu. "I'd enchanted it just for you."
Still having a poker face, ChenLu hesitatingly brought the cups to his lips with both hands holding the cups.
"Ahh." He exclaimed as the tea went down his throat. "I've almost forgotten what it tasted like."
His demeanour relaxed a bit while Zemo became increasingly frustrated on the inside.
Ryan then took the time to explain to ChenLu about his daughter's circumstances. Zemo actually didn't do anything to his daughter. He just promised ChenLu to bring her to him undetected by the other parties that were searching for his descendant.
(A/N: Chinese novel plot. I know I know)
ChenLu's ex-girlfriend has been hiding the child from the outer world for 30 years now.
"By the way, you also have a grandson now. Your daughter got married last year to a simple teacher in the countryside. They are living happily now, away from all the troubles. I'd make sure of it."
ChenLu watched the image of his daughter with a longing expression. "Lin. What happened to her?"
"She died a few years back. She had never married anyone and had her entire journey dedicated to be… letters to you."
In all of her life, she has never loved anyone else. She had waited for ChenLu to come home all of these years.
ChenLu dropped her head as he heard about it. Ryan decided to give him some time to process the matter and turned to Zemo.
"As for you. My preposition is simple. You will continue doing what you're doing – wrecking havoc in other countries, especially those who rejected the world summit invitation."
Zemo breaks up an evil smile and leaned forward. "What's in it for me?"
"Your life."
Ryan shut down any scheme inside of Zemo's mind to take advantage of the situation. Zemo is smart enough to know his position in this negotiation.
"You're still going to be the leader for the Masters of Evil or whatever your name is. But I will be the owner keeping all of you on a leash."
"So you decided to fabricate incidents all over the world to pressure the other countries to submit to you?"
Ryan leaned backward on the chair and stretched lazily. "I've already given them carrots, but they don't want them. So I will try using a stick this time."
"What about resources? Or the guarantee that I won't be arrested afterward?"
"I have lots of grey contacts in the world. They will be your handlers. And don't worry about people catching you as long as you obey my command."
He still have his slaves…His subordinate that he usurped from the vampires before this. With them around, no one would cast any suspicions on Ryan on the attacks.
"Kill an innocent, then the deal is off. You will lose your life, and your little group will follow suits soon after. Do you understand?"
Zemo had no choice but to take the deal. Inside his mind, he had schemed 100 different ways to show the true Ryan Knight to the world. The manipulative, ruthless, and tyrannical Ryan Knight.
Ryan took out a small parchment and pushed in on Zemo's side of the table.
"Drip a drop of blood here."
"What?" Flabbergasted, Zemo instinctively tried to avoid touching the parchment, but a wound opened up on his fingers from out of knowhere and a drop of blood fell on the contract.
"What did you just do?!" Zemo stood up and said in horror.
"Nothing…If you kept your word." Ryan picked up the piece of paper and twisted its edges slightly.
Zemo started to have a seizure and let out a soul-shattering scream and fell down on the floor.
"If you don't…Well you understand right?" Ryan grinned evilly and waved the piece of paper in front of Zemo.