"Run!" The citizens screamed in fear as the Hydra monster increased in size. Winds from the Inhuman Hydra wing's flap caused the rooftop of the houses to fly away, windows broken by the pressure. The San Juan police were helpless in the matter. Bullets couldn't reach the monster as it was too high up in the air, not to mention it has invulnerable skin.
The inhuman Hydra was now more than 50 meters big as it kept growing in size. All 5 heads opened their mouths in opposite directions and sprayed fire toward the populace.
"Now now."
A giant Eldritch shield appeared on the fiery pillar, blocking all the fires from killing the citizens
"I couldn't let you do that, can I?" Ryan Knight, Wanda Maximoff, Pietro Maximoff, and Gwen Stacy walked through the portal and arrived at San Juan. A few buildings were burning, with a few people trapped inside. Poisonous fog appeared on top of the city, however it was dealt with by Ryan creating a few wind vacuums and sucking off the poison to another dimension.
"Pietro." Ryan called out. Without replying, Pietro ran toward the burning building at high speed to evacuate the people inside.
He was wearing a blue shirt with a lone white thunderbolt on it. As he and his sister didn't bring anything with them to the Knight's mansion, Ryan gave him access to the clothes synthesiser to create clothing that could withstand his high speed and gave him extra defence. He had a lot of designs to choose from, but Pietro sticks to the simple stuff.
"Wanda. The brainwashed people please." Ryan ordered. Wanda nodded and ran toward the group brainwashed people that had been keeping the SHIELD agents trapped near the fort.
"Can she do it?" Gwen asked.
"She can. I already taught her how." Ryan replied.
"Want to fight the dragon?" He asked casually while holding Gwen by her shoulder.
"Sure. But. That's human right?" Gwen smirked underneath her mask and prepared herself.
"An Inhuman to be precise. We just need to hold him here until the Inhuman party comes to deal with him." Ryan said ambiguously.
"Attilan?" Gwen asked, looking expectant to see Medusa again.
After Ryan had brought the country to the interstellar stage, of course they would find the city on the moon. Ryan and King Black Bolt had spoken a few times and Attilan had agreed to a diplomatic relationship.
The resources trouble on the moon has been alleviated and now there's talk between Ryan and Black Bolt to send Attilan to Mars where 50% of the planet has been terraformed into a liveable planet for carbon-based species.
"Let's go." Ryan said and disappeared with Gwen from the ground. They reappeared on top of the Inhuman Hydra, alarming it greatly.
"STOP SPEWING FIRE!" Gwen yelled out and electrocuted the Inhuman with a massive electro-shock voltage, charring the Inhuman skin around where she placed her hand.
"Nice." Ryan muttered, not minding the electro-shock in the least. The Hydra Inhuman almost lost his consciousness… only one of them. It has 5 consciousness totals so when one couldn't control the body, the other one quickly took over.
"ROAR!" The giant head tried to bite at Ryan and Gwen who were standing on the back of the dragon, but Ryan created a Tao Mandala shield inside the dragon's mouth.
"Let's see, if I cut one, will another two more take it place?" Ryan smirked as his scientific curiosity took over. Gwen rolled her eyes and said, "Don't do an experiment now. Bring the dragon outside the city first! ... We can experiment on him after."
He turned to Gwen and said, "I really want to kiss you now."
"…Shut up."
The whole purpose of letting the mutated statue out was because Ryan wanted some data on the rare mutagenic process. Otherwise, Kai would already destroy the Inhuman Hydra during their most weakened state, the terrigenesis state.
The dragon was stunned hearing the couple's conversation. Underestimated, the dragon bellowed, creating a massive sound shockwave that almost caused the citizen's eardrums to shatter. But the ones who received the attack point black weren't even affected.
"Ahh. That scared me." Pietro exclaimed and pushed his finger on his ears to ease his hurting ears. He disappeared from his initial position, only leaving a blue streak that entered a burning building.
"Come on kid." Inside a burning building, Pietro grabbed two young children from their bed, carrying one each in his arms.
"Lower your head. There may be backlash." Pietro advised. Wrapped in a blanket, the kids nodded and followed his order. "Well. I was just kidding. I am too awesome to give you backlash." Pietro said teasingly before he disappeared from the burning room. The ceiling on the room fell a second after Pietro had got out with the kids.
Pietro reappeared outside the building a split second later and placed the kids on the ground. "Take care of yourself. Go run to safety."
"Who…are you?" one of the kids, a young Latino boy, asked in a heavy accent. Pietro replied cockily, "The name is Pietro. But Mr. Knight calls me Quicksilver."
"MR. KNIGHT!" The kids exclaimed in excitement, promptly forgetting Pietro's name after they heard Ryan's.
"… Seriously?" Pietro muttered.
A few brainbots ran toward the children as Pietro was advising them. Pietro turned to the punk-looking brainbot and said, "Finally. I was waiting for you to show up."
Ryan's disaster relief mothership had arrived at the city of San Juan to help the people here. With the reputation of the brainbots and their experience in helping a disaster-stricken area, the situation around the city was quickly stabilised.
"Bowg Bowg (You wanna fight punk?!)" A purple, punk-looking brainbots with a metallic mohawk on his head barked instigatively at Pietro.
However, Pietro just smiled and thought the robot was cute. It was lucky for him that he couldn't understand the robot as purple was talking shit about him that time, especially about his hair.
"Let's compete to see who can save the most people. Me or the entire disaster relief robots." Pietro challenged the purple brainbot.
"Bowg Bowg, (Loser has to be castrated.)" Purple said.
"Hahaha. I will assume you said yes." Pietro laughed and disappeared from in front of the robot. The evacuation process went extremely fast after the challenge was initiated. Pietro was working very hard to help the people there even though he didn't know his masculinity was at risk.
Near the fort.
"KILL THE OUTSIDER! LONG LIVE HYDRA! LONG LIVE HYDRA! LONG LIVE HYDRA!" The brainwashed citizens were chanting as they chased the SHIELD agents with torch sticks and pitchforks.
"What is this? The Middle ages? And why the ICER gun didn't work?" Phil Coulson was leading the SHIELD agents in defending themselves against the citizens.
SHIELD agents' shot down the citizens using the ICER bullets, but only one in five citizens would fall down. Some SHIELD agents had to sacrifice themselves to save the fallen citizens so as to not let them be trampled by the mob.
Those who did were then stabbed by the pitchfork and were burned by the torch, but their clothing didn't even get a scratch from the mob's weapons. It still broke a few bones though for them from the blunt force trauma.
A scarlet energy suddenly pushed out the mob back, saving the agent that had fallen into the mob.
"Are you okay?" Wanda asked as she helped the agent to stand up.
"I'm fine... Who are you?" The agent asked quickly.
"I'm Wanda. I came with Mr. Knight." She replied.
Coulson jogged toward Wanda lightly. He didn't have the urgency as Wanda's power kept pushing the mob backward. "The Director is here?" Phil interjected as a few agents came to help their wounded friend.
"Yes. He is…up there." Wanda pointed at the dragon.
Phil muttered in dissatisfaction as he tried to search for Ryan on top of the squirming dragon. "Seriously. That guy. Does he understand what will happen if he is injured? The whole country…no… the whole world will be impacted by it."
Wanda nodded in agreement beside Coulson.
"I need to remove the suggestion inside their mind... The energy shield will be lost after that. Can you help protect me?" Wanda replied, her tone was polite and kind. She may have done that on purpose as she knew the agents there were serving Ryan as his subordinates.
It also had something to do with the mental training Ryan had her done the moment they started their training before.
In their first session, Ryan had entered Wanda's mind to investigate the cause of her making some drastic choices that she would make in the future. He told her then that the moment she entered someone's mind, her undefended mind absorbed parts of their characteristic.
And with her testing her raw abilities in the minds of Hydra agents while she was locked inside of Baron Strucker's castle, her mind was slowly changed as impacted by the agent's unstable minds.
Ryan spent the first few hours just talking with Wanda and taught her the art of occlumency and legilimency so that the same thing wouldn't happen again. He also taught her to keep her emotions in check while using her abilities, which was something that she needs more training to do.
FLASHBACK.
Inside the Knight's Mansion.
"There are a few types of magic you need to understand before we start. Let's start from the beginning, the very basic one, magic manipulation."
Ryan walked toward Wanda and gently brought her hands up before he placed his hand on the back of her palm. She blushed at the sudden contact and lowered her head.
'He's too close.' Wanda thought as Ryan stood in front of her. Gwen narrowed her eyes while angrily eating a bag of chips as she 'supervised' the training from the side.
Ryan was actually scanning Wanda' chaos magic to further understand her power activation to mimic it later using his magic circuit. That's why he had to have a skin to skin… a lot of contact with Wanda.
He did the same with Pietro as he studied his space-time ability, but Gwen didn't see that. She only saw him being 'flirtatious' with Wanda. And with the latter having a massive crush on Ryan, Gwen couldn't help but feel defensive.
" You can do this almost instinctively, maybe your ability activation helped you with it. Although you can manipulate your power, it will cost you a lot of energy to manipulate magic in its raw form."
Gwen narrowed her eyes again as she watched Ryan speak gently toward Wanda and took care of her the way he never did the other members of female Avengers before. Beside her, a bald granny in a monk suit was also eating chips as she watched the show. However, Favia was struggling internally even though she didn't have any changes in her expression.
'So that's the Scarlet witch. A being shielded from the Time Stone, blocking me to know who was the true witch. Now, I don't know which one to monitor. The being who can be shielded from the time stone, or Ryan who could do what the time stone couldn't.'
Seeing Ryan laugh as he watched Wanda fail in her first magic technique attempt, the Ancient one smiled softly. 'As Ryan said before, she may not fall into degeneration with proper guidance. I was so alarmed by the prospect of the witch that I forgot the most basic things to do.'
"To teach." Favia said and floated toward Wanda. "I'll take over her training from now on."
Wanda and Ryan were startled by the sudden intrusion, but Ryan didn't back down. "She will spend 2 weeks with me first. After that, you can teach her. She can take over Kamar Taj as the Sorcerer Supreme…I mean, Witch Supreme? Supreme witch… Mommy Supreme?"
The last was one muttered with a barely discerning volume, causing all the women there to tilt their head in confusion.
"Anyway. Let me take a crack at it first."
Favia looked at Ryan for a few seconds before she said, "I feel that you're scheming something. But I don't know what. So, I will let it go for now."
Flashback ends.
A scarlet energy filled the area around the mob, confining them within its wall. Suddenly, the wall disappeared and Wanda fell limblessly on the ground.
"Protect her." Coulson ordered. He saw that a few of the mobs were regaining their clarity so Wanda's 'treatment' was working.
"Kill The WITCH!"
"BURN HER AT THE STAKE!"
(From afar) "LICK HER FEET!"
Controlled by the Inhuman Hydra, the angry mob tried to attack Wanda. A few of SHIELD's LMD, (Life model decoy) and the disaster relief robot worked together to stop the mob from getting near her.
Battling mid-air, Ryan cuts off one of Inhuman Hydra's heads using a magical sword construct.
"Ohh… They really grow back!" Gwen said excitedly.
"It's a literal Hydra hahaha." Ryan chuckled. "I need to cut off all the heads at the same time to kill it."
A sense of fear rises up in the heart of the immortal Hydra. It tried to roll to get Ryan and Gwen off his back, but like a spider, both of them don't even move with the heavy shaking.
Despite all of the commotion in the outside world, Kai was still unmoving from his spot beside Kai. Ryan's shadow clone walked toward the empty ancient city after he had trapped the city sentience using a magicraft computer.
"So…You're not joining the fun?" Ryan said as he walked next to Kai, but his sight was on Skye's statue.
"No." Kai answered shortly.
Both of them fall into a silence for a while.
"Do you blame me?" Ryan asked suddenly. Kai was still silently meditating to calm himself down.
"I could have stopped it. Her chance of getting her power. I could've changed her fate…"
"Stop Ryan." Kai said, slowly opening his eyes. "If you're not as anxious as I am, you won't even come to the city."
"…"
"It wasn't your fault. Knowing the future… wasn't your fault." Kai said. Ryan rubbed the back of his head as he said anxiously, "But why do I feel like it is? The feeling is..very shitty."
"I am not strong enough to actually change how this universe works. See that fucking hydra worm up there? The rule is very clear, when the heroes are strong, so will the enemy. That worm isn't supposed to exist, but I will make it come true. Our existence makes it come true. And who knows what will happen in the future…I just…"
"Ryan. You know that giving me excuses is the same as giving yourself an excuse, right?" Kai said. He knew Ryan wouldn't make excuses if he was sure of his actions.
"If…She is powerful enough, Then I will know she can protect herself when I'm gone. The process is tearing my heart apart, but I agreed with your decision…not to stop it. Now, please agree with mine."
Kai would stay there for as long as it takes for Skye to finish up her terrigenesis process. Whether it's weeks, months, or maybe years. She was too unresponsive in the process causing Ryan to come there personally to check up on her.