The weather in New York was always clear, and the sky was too blue, setting off all the buildings on the ground in a deep contrast. The sunlight heightened the contrast of everything, making the bright brighter and the dark darker. By nine-thirty, it was already dazzling enough to make it hard to keep your eyes open.
With a couple of beeps from the coffee machine, the aromatic coffee flowed into the cup. Shiller picked it up and took a sip, letting out a sigh of relief.
The delivery robot brought over the freshly fried toast to the table as Miss Elsa stretched her neck curiously towards the robot's arm. Her sharp teeth had just appeared when she heard the robot's resigned voice.
"I'm sorry, Miss Elsa, I guess you have a tendency to test structural strength with your teeth. Please refrain from doing so; I am quite expensive and lack health insurance."
Elsa immediately looked disappointed, her eyes roving before settling on the plate again.
Jason, towering as if he filled the entire kitchen, flipped the bread with a spatula, while Tim washed the butter off his hands. Dick and Raven were dealing with a broken toaster.
As he placed the coffee on the table, Shiller yelled, "Mealtime!"
Clearly, Ultron was also synchronizing this notification. Pamela, with her bird's-nest hair, came out of her room, yawning hugely and groggily making her way to the table.
"What were you up to last night?" Shiller asked as he set a coffee in front of her, "I must emphasize again that I don't want to stop you from chatting online, but I hope you at least wear something, even just underwear, okay?"
Pamela reached for a cigarette but pulled her hand back remembering Elsa was still there, then performed a smokeless smoking act and exhaled, saying, "I'm quite conservative; I wouldn't do something like that."
"And then within one day, you sent your pictures to 63 TikTok bloggers." Shiller rolled his eyes and said, "You're practically a frontline tester for the accuracy of their app's big data pushes."
"This app is amazing!" Pamela pulled out her phone again and started snapping pictures of her breakfast and typing furiously, apparently chatting with someone.
"You're not trying to get Natasha anymore?"
"Kids make choices, adults want it all," Pamela fluently recited a popular internet phrase, yawned, and added, "Nick invited me to work at S.H.I.E.L.D. for a while, so now I have a legitimate reason to get close to Natasha..."
"To get close to Natasha, you're even willing to work for Nick," Shiller couldn't help but give her a thumbs-up.
"Do you think professors at Gotham University are any better than Nick? I work for them for free. At least Nick pays me. He even agreed to schedule my holidays the same day as Natasha's."
"You're too naive. What he meant by that is that you two will never have a holiday again."
Jason brought over the salad he'd mixed. Tim was still slicing sausage, while Dick reorganized the food they'd messed up in the fridge. While doing so, he said, "There are too many things here I've never seen before, doctor. I've put them on the top shelf, you sort them out."
"You guys really don't need to be so polite," Shiller said.
"Oh, don't mention it, doctor," Jason smiled at him and said, "We just got here; it's only right we prepare a meal."
"My point is, if it wasn't for your formalities, we should be having a lavish Chinese breakfast this morning instead of white people's food," Shiller took a bite of the butter-fried bread, chewed, and nodded anyway.
"Can you cook, doctor?" Harley, all dressed up and fiddling with her new phone, didn't seem as interested in Greed as she did in Arrogant, treating the latter more like a good friend.
"Better than that professor you know," Shiller said as he ate his bread. "Are you going shopping later? Want me to find you company?"
Harley hesitated and asked, "Is he handsome?"
"Six feet three tall, 396 pounds, specializes in butter-fried toast."
"Is his surname Todd, by any chance?" Harley rolled her eyes and said, "I don't want to go shopping with men, they just ruin the fun."
"What are you thinking? I'm talking about Captain America; if you don't want him, I might ask his girlfriend Carter if she's free."
Harley clearly had heard of Captain America, her eyes roaming as she said, "Is it real with him and Iron Man? I mean… "
As soon as Iron Man was mentioned, it seemed like Shiller had just remembered something. He, too, pulled out his phone to send a message but stopped midway and looked up, saying to Ultron, "Find me the biggest maternity store and book a shuttle. Pepper just finished her confinement, and I bet Tony forgot to take her out for some air."
"What's confinement?" Pamela, curious, asked, and Shiller said the word in Chinese, which he didn't understand.
"Mr. Tony Stark's wife Pepper gave birth over a month ago, and Xu Shang-Chi recommended a nanny from Hong Kong for her to follow the Eastern style of confinement. Pepper was very satisfied and recovered well, but when I visited her the other day, she mentioned feeling a bit cooped up. I suggested Tony take her out for some air, but he probably got too busy and forgot."
Harley seemed somewhat familiar with the concept, commenting, "I heard that after childbirth, Easterners drink a lot of herbal broth and must stay in bed all the time, which is terrifying."
"That's very outdated. They've developed a new method, combining classical and modern approaches. Although you still drink herbal broth, a yoga fitness course and other recovery programs are also arranged, which are reportedly quite good," Shiller explained.
He was just about to continue when his phone started ringing frantically. He picked it up, and immediately on the other end, Stark's cries of despair came through.
"It's over, I forgot! Where is the biggest maternity and baby product store in all of New York? I need to book a shuttle there right now!"
"I've already booked it for you," Shiller sighed. "If the nanny leaves today, give her a big red envelope... I know Pepper must have already given her one, but giving one yourself matters."
"When you go back, you'd better be more attentive, hug the kid more, and better not bother her with company matters. If the sky falls, your uncle will be there to hold it up."
After hanging up the phone, Shiller shook his head as Harley was cutting toast and said, "It sounds like his Stark Group isn't doing too well."
"It's not really because of that, just that the aerial transport system isn't being well received in the Midwest; Tony has been so stressed by those rednecks that his anxiety was nearly cured."
Harley laughed with schadenfreude and said, "He's stumbled into the hardest part of his career—getting rednecks to accept something new."
"But he'll soon find a turning point," Shiller thought for a moment and then said, "The efficiency of national goods circulation is constantly rising. If they still plan to use trains and highways, this year's farm financial statements will give them a punch."
As breakfast was nearing its end, they began discussing their plans for the upcoming days.
Harley finished her meal first and, wiping her mouth, said, "I didn't come here just for fun. I heard you've started interstellar colonization, and I want to invest in some industries early. The prospects for appreciation in the future should be good."
"I plan to hang around New York for the next few days, then take a trip to the West Coast, and finally visit the Andromeda Galaxy and Centaurus constellation. If possible, I'd also like to visit the capitals of the Three Great Empires."
"I'm not interested in aliens," Pamela said. "S.H.I.E.L.D. has offered me some optional missions with good pay. I plan to work for a while, then use the start-up capital to swap for technology and supplies I can use."
"So you're going to Washington?" Jason asked, knowing that the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters had moved to Washington, now not far from the FBI headquarters.
"No, I'm not leaving New York yet," Pamela ate the last piece of bread and said, "I'll contact the New York branch first."
"Because the New York branch has Natasha?"
"Not just because of that," Pamela thought for a moment and said, "I find the public opinion environment in this cosmos more tolerant than ours; maybe I can revisit my old profession."
"Can the power of All Things Green be used here?" Shiller asked.
"This is in a Doujie system scenario," Pamela said. "I didn't add a power-limiting card, so of course, I can use it."
Shiller then remembered; they hadn't traveled to this world, but had directly queued for a scenario in Doujie, and with the help of the Doujie System, some of their universe's powers could be mutually available.
This was also beneficial for fairness; otherwise, mages like Constantine or Doctor Strange would become ordinary people once they left their original world, and then there'd be no need for them to participate.
"You're thinking of cultivating attacking plants again?!" Dick said somewhat helplessly. "You've already dismantled two labs; those plant-rights activists complaining about you isn't entirely without reason."
"I support them," Tim said. "If there's an attacking cabbage in a vegetable patch, it's totally unfair to the other cabbages that can't move; you're being biased."
Pamela clearly dodged the question and said, "But I usually wouldn't go to the vegetable patch to pick veggies; the ones I cultivate are carefully selected in the lab..."
"If any of your evil experiments' main subjects were animals, I would find a way to get you into a police station," Dick said. "Kidnapping, dissection, crossbreeding, viruses, genetic modification, biochemical experiments..."
"You could probably only find such labs in S.H.I.E.L.D.," Shiller said. "I think you'd have quite a bit in common with Nick."
"Why not with Natasha?"
"She's a product of a biochemical experiment."
Jason steered the conversation away from dangerous territory and said, "I do want to make some money, but if not, it's no big deal. I'm very interested in that Solar System development plan; where can I learn more about it?"
"Go see Captain America," Shiller, also wiping his mouth, said. "The FBI has been recruiting personnel to participate in the Solar System development plan, Captain America is in charge of training the newcomers; I can get you a trainee spot so you can get the insider news."
"That would be perfect," Jason fiddled with his phone a bit and then said, "I've followed Captain America's TikTok; he's posted a lot of self-defense tutorials, I think he's a very charming person."
Dick leaned in and glanced at Jason's follow list, then said, "You're following this robot called Master Ultron too?! You don't really think he can conquer the world, do you?"
"I certainly don't; I just find it interesting," Jason said. "A robot even has its own social media accounts."
"I think it's a complete scam," Tim drank a sip of coffee and said, "There must be a team manipulating it from behind; didn't you see the shopping links under his videos? There are always people who will do anything for traffic."
Shiller laughed, everyone looked at him, but he said nothing, and Dick glanced at Raven, who was busy eating, then said, "We're planning to tour around New York first; I've heard the city's scenery is nice."
"I'm going to Stark Group," Tim raised his hand and said. "If you could also get me an internal staff spot, that would be great!"