A/N - Hello my dear peeps! I come with good tidings, in the form of this chapter. Anywho, aside from delivering this important chapter to you, I also wanted to deliver an explanation to yall.
You might have noticed my updates being on point from Monday to Thursday before faltering throughout the weekend, despite me being off from work for the weekend.
Well, here's the story for that.[TLDR at end]
You see, Monday to Thursday, I have a regular 10 hour work shift. On Fridays, however, I am on call so that translates to a roughly 15-16 hour shift for the day. Yeah, it is pretty brutal so I am pretty much out of it for the majority of Saturday and sometimes, on Sunday as well.
That is why I am unable to maintain the glorious grind of pushing out chapters day by day because my eyes start to water if I so much as look at a screen after that harrowing shift.
At Least 4-5 chapters will be updated every week.
TLDR - Huge ass work shift on Friday so brain go slow on weekends, explaining the lack of content on weekends.
Disclaimer - All the owners have their respective rights. I only own the characters that came from my addled brain (don't worry, I am completely sober).
Knowhere [After Jack had been taken into his custody]
–Taneleer Tivan–
Fascinating. Very fascinating indeed. He watched as the screen showed two signatures, one of that of Mar-Vell and one that was recorded from the Earthling before he was shoved into the Primed C-fluid vat.
Despite being majorly a backwater planet, Midgard, or Earth as the natives liked to call themselves, was a point of interest for many powers, despite the hanging sword that was gaining Odin's attention, in a bad way.
The reasons were many, the prime of them was the unusual hotspot of extra-dimensional energy on that planet along with the emergence of Mar-Vell from that same place.
It had always stood out as a surprise to him how someone like her, someone who embodied the very concept of unstoppable in the wider galaxy, could have come from someplace like Earth, where the natives were so exceedingly weak that they lived for less than 70 cycles and that is if they managed to survive that long because of their exceedingly weak constitution.
And yet, someone like Mar-Vell was also once a human. The same weak brittle short lived humans that were commonplace on that dirtball. Then somehow, he wagered that an Infinity Stone was involved somewhere in the process, Mar-Vell managed to become someone who was more valuable than a hundred earths.
After all, she personally had reduced dozens of Kree Warships to bits, along with single-handedly drawing the focus of something as huge as the Kree War Machine on her, temporarily halting their usual expansionist tendencies. That had brought the attention of many to her, both good and bad.
Xandar, for one, had put their support behind her, not that she ever used it or even needed it. Kree had outright declared her as a terrorist and had issued a bounty worth millions that just kept on jumping with every battleship, outpost, mining colonies, and more destroyed.
Even with all that heat on her, she had proven herself to be made of sterner stuff, shrugging off all attempts made to ambush her, whilst vaporising all her ambushers in turn, deterring any other mercenary from even trying to cash in on her bounty.
Knowing all about her achievements, he had been interested in humans and was curious if there were any others who could also do the marvellous things that she could do and also to see just exactly what was the reason for her powers because, in her early days of operation, his sensors had consistently confused her for the energy signature, faint as it was, of an Infinity Stone.
Unfortunately, his search yielded no result as the heat on the planet after it was revealed that the Kree had lost multiple warships was too much so he could not sense any pirate who would make for a convenient scapegoat.
Going there himself was out of the question. He had already risked Odin's wrath once when he had not surrendered the Dark Elf and sold him the Primed C-fluid for an inflated prince; he did not want to risk that again.
Infinity Stones, Power Cosmic, Celestials, and Skyfather level powers were the only beings who could hope to hurt him. Some of them even held powers that could very well kill him. Odin being the strongest of even the Skyfathers meant that he had a decent chance of finishing him off.
That was why he had only kept a tangential interest in the planet. There was nothing that happened on that planet ever since Mar-Vell herself emerged from it and he had almost written it off as a one-time fluke when the unthinkable happened.
Thanos, The Mad Titan happened.
For some reason, Thanos had sent the Chitauri, the signature fodder army of Thanos, to Earth, probably with the intention of conquering it. Of course, he did not send all of his army, just the single mothership but even that had sent waves across the galaxy's gossip network.
Chitauri, despite their lackluster individual powers, not than much more powerful than a peak human, were feared across the galaxy. Not because they were ferocious and never stopped even if they were dying. No, it was because of one simple reason.
They heralded the arrival of Thanos, and/or his Black Order. The most fearsome group of warriors in the galaxy.
Odin with his daughter would have topped that list had the old man not gone senile and banished his strongest combatant for some reason.
That was why he, along with millions of others who had access to live footage gathered from Earth's intranet, had been interested in finding out just why the Chitauri had been sent to conquer Earth.
The Chitauri being sent after some random planet to cull its population in half was not new. If it was just that, nobody would have even bothered with the news. No, what was significant about this event was that the Chitauri were landing on Earth, a planet that was part of the Nine Realms, Odin's fiefdom.
Earth was no reason to pick a fight with the All-Father, who, despite his centuries of inactivity, was just as fearsome as he was back in his warring days, if not more so. He knew that Asgardians grew more powerful with age and imagining Odin's power at this juncture was just impossible for him.
So, imagine his surprise, when he saw that the Chitauri were coming in droves through a portal that looked suspiciously like the one that had been used by one of the Celestials he had the horror of meeting once. And to think that particular Celestial was one of the weaker no-named ones.
Seeing the Green Giant stomp out every single unit of the Chitauri as if they were mere flies, and doing so at dozens of places at the same time was awe inspiring. Not that he could match up to Mar-Vell's sheer energy output but the way the Chitauri were losing, it was a done match, especially since he knew that Thanos would not risk the All-Father descending on that realm himself and would not show his face for that.
His assumptions were proven correct when he saw the portal being closed and the humans sending in through the closing portal, one of their primitive fission weaponry, destroying the mothership Thanos had sent with the Chitauri, marking Earth's first victory against another species.
He had been ecstatic to find the existence of another human with power or at least the potential to reach Mar-Vell's level, prompting him to put in another bounty for his collection. Oh, he so loved collecting unique things and in his long life, he had never seen another species with that level of barrier manipulation, except for the celestials and that nugget only served to increase his interest.
Who could have known that not even a rotation had passed when the same Earthling appeared right on his turf, half-dead and swaddled with energies from not one but two Infinity Stones? It was safe to say that making sure that this unique specimen survived was a number one priority on his list.
In the time it would take for the Earthling to recover, he had extracted some tissue and was waiting for the genetic scans. He had something important to confirm.
Through great difficulty, he had procured a single drop of blood from the vaunted Mar-Vell. That single drop was the result of the Kree hitting her with their new experimental gravity well guns. She was one tough human and that was why he was looking for any similarities between their genetic structure.
Judging by the vastly different powers, he was of the opinion that it would be different but he wanted to see exactly what it was in human DNA that allowed them to survive exposure to an Infinity Stone. TWO, in the case of Mr.Jack here.
He had kept a close eye on happenings on the Earthen intranet and had been rewarded by this information. To think that the greatest defender of Earth had been a mere child by their own standards. Well, it was good that he had no compulsion to follow some arbitrary laws regarding the maturity of species.
Once Mr.Jack recovered, he would be interested in running some tests on his body and powers as well, because there was no way that interacting with energies from multiple Infinity Stones and then surviving, didn't change anything in him.
Maybe he could become even stronger than he was now.
Not that it would help him in any way. He had long experiences in handling beings vastly stronger than himself. Life had a way of evolving to better match their surroundings but all evolution eventually led to the path of sentience and that came with its own set of caveats.
Self consciousness was a hit or miss but a central nervous system was one of the pitfalls of becoming sentient for an organic being. That single fact allowed him to capture beings who could lay waste to planets on their own.
He would have Mr.Jack here tamed in no time.
Now, all he had to do was wait for him to recover.
To that effect, he exited his office and arrived at the recovery chamber, built specifically so that his collections could be brought here without fuss and then once they were done with their regular medical checkups, they could be sent back to their pods without any outside interaction at all.
The only one, aside from him, who could change anything about the process was Carina, and she…Let's just say that she would have a much better chance of killing herself than ever having the thought of betraying him, so deep was her conditioning, a product built by one of her predecessors.
He silently extended his hand towards Carina and she immediately handed him the central control tablet, an absolute one of a kind device that controlled every single aspect of Knowhere, ranging from the miners to the Gate Blockers to the locks on his Collection.
He swiped the screen and arrived at the recovery tab, only for his eyes to narrow immediately as he saw the supposed ETA on the Earthling's recovery.
"Carina," He spoke, his voice dangerously low.
"Y-Yes, My Lord?" Carina spoke and he could feel her bowing deeply, braced for the shock that inevitably followed when she made any error, or if he felt like teasing her a bit.
"Is this accurate?" He said and shoved the tablet in her face, which displayed the ETA for Jack's recovery. IT said it would take an entire cycle for it to be done.
"Yes, sir. I was confused at first as well b-but the damage done to his body means that the fluid required is much more than expected. The fluid is also not working as well as it should. Should I check one ag-"
Her tirade was stopped as he raised his hand and waved her off. She scrambled off as he leaned towards the glass that separated the vat from him.
As of now, the only parts that Mr.Jack had were his head and his neck. He did have his torso when he was rescued from space but in the time between bringing him here, the torso had disintegrated, probably from the strain of the energy it had been subjected to.
He could visibly see parts of him being regenerated under the influence of the Primed C-fluid but the process was very slow. At the rate things were going, he would have to restart the process of creating Primed C-fluid once again. He had suspended doing so thinking that it would be enough to last several dozen cycles.
Apparently, Mr.Jack here required more than that for his body to regenerate. No matter, it would be all worth it.
He was an Earthling and in his experience, they were quite open to negotiations, trying to cut a deal with powers so far above them that it was not even funny. If it all worked out for the better, he might just gain a perfect protector along with a unique specimen, at the same time.
Ah, he did love it when it all came together in the end. After all, he had been worried about the exploding situation in the galaxy, what with Mar-Vell finally pushing the Supreme Intelligence into restarting the supreme soldier program, which was deemed too wasteful because of the Kree lives it demanded.
The Mad Titan was once again on the move, despite him and his Black Order not being seen for dozens of cycles and many had hoped, perhaps foolishly, that he had died or faded into oblivion.
Apparently not, considering the very important event of testing the All-Father's patience by sending in part of his army to one of the Nine Realms, an area that his forces had expressly avoided for the entirety of their existence.
"Carina, inform me once he is in any condition to talk. I think this could be a start to a wonderful little partnership," He said to Carina after he came out of the recovery chamber. She nodded timidly as he left for his office once again.
He might have to wait for a cycle but that was no time in the grand scheme of things, especially for one such as him who was older than most stars in the universe had been burning for.
____xx____
One Cycle Later
He watched as the robot arms conducted the final checks after replacing the vat of used Primed C-fluid, revealing the unblemished body of one Jack Z. Sullivan, Green Guardian of Earth.
A lot has happened on Earth in this one cycle, as expected of short lived races. They crammed a lot of events in a very short time span, making most of their pathetically short lifespans.
For one, Jack that was breathing normally in front of him was declared a martyr and a fierce shadow war had broken out because of him, partially because some people, some influential people of Earth believed that his life could have been saved had it not been for the ineptitude for some humans at the end of their lifespan.
Apparently, they felt threatened by the mere existence of someone so much more powerful than them that it beggared belief.
He had a sense of Deja Vu as he remembered his first secretary. The woman was as powerful as she was broken…broken mentally by the very people she had bled for. That had made it so that she was a prime candidate for moulding into his perfect tool.
He wondered if Mr.Jack here could also be conditioned like that. Although, he had tried all the mental conditioning technology he had on hand, in the past cycle. In fact, the moment it had been deemed safe, he had placed a conditioning helmet on Jack's head but apparently, his annoying powers extended to erecting a barrier in his mind as well, cutting anyone off from even coming close.
All this while he was completely out of it. He couldn't wait to see what he would do once he woke up and was able to use his powers consciously.
He was also a little bit wary because the amount of energy that was coursing through his body was unlike anything he had ever seen, approaching levels that Mar-Vell had only shown at the beginning of her career and never after that.
But that wariness was drowned out by the sheer excitement of the possibility that he would have someone that powerful in his collection. If he was amenable to his proposal, he would have someone who could create unique specimens for him.
No longer would he have to resort to mercenaries to carry out his work.
He was the collector and while the rest of the galaxy knew that he was powerful, they also knew that he was not infallible.
If pushed, most powers could band together to destroy him altogether. Even if he somehow survived, he would be imprisoned deep in the strongest prison they could find.
Besides, if he was defeated, it would mean that his collection too would be either destroyed or distributed among the victors. His life's work, destroyed in front of him, even he wouldn't be able to recover from that.
That was why he was looking forward to Mr. Jack finally being in his collection. His mere existence, the existence of someone of Mar-Vell's powers in his hands would mean that most civilisations would hesitate in taking action against him.
"S-Sir, he is waking up,"
He was snapped out of his thoughts by Carina's gentle nudge, for which he rewarded her with a small low setting shock.
Now, let's meet Earth's saviour.
Word Count - 2822
A/N - Collector POV finished.
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I already have upto 15 extra chapters published there.