''General,'' a soldier saluted. ''The target has been surrounded, awaiting orders.''
''Commence the operation,'' General Ross ordered, paying close attention to the large screen in front of him.
Beside Ross stood some of the most important people in America. They had invested significant amounts of resources into this operation, allowing him to find Bruce Banner much faster than he had expected.
These important people, instead of taking the mission seriously, stood around drinking wine as if it were some kind of party. The small talk between these figures came to a halt once they noticed the operation had started, all of them turning their attention to the screen.
On the screen, cameras attached to soldiers entered the small house in Brazil. Guns were raised at each possible entrance as the first soldiers quickly gestured for others to come in. Like that, they cleared the entire ground floor and started moving up to the top floor.
Once there, the soldiers covered each possible entry point, from the bathroom all the way to Bruce's room. Inside the bedroom, Bruce sat behind a desk with glasses on while he studied a glass pipe with a green-red substance in it.
The first agent stopped at the open door, making specific hand signals to indicate the target was in the room to the others. The other agents in the hallway nodded, moving closer with their guns.
What happened after that was a blur. The soldiers moved in with their guns raised and immediately shot multiple tranquilizer darts toward Bruce.
Bruce barely had time to realize what was happening to him as the first tranquilizer dart hit the back of his shoulder. Multiple more darts hit him shortly after, quickly causing him to slump forward onto the desk.
For exactly one second, everything went silent. Then, Bruce's body transformed into his large green Hulk form. The Hulk roared loudly as it charged at the soldiers.
Afterward, the Hulk charged at the soldier Ross was showing on the large screen. A green fist shot toward the camera, causing it to fly backward and leaving a blood-red mist behind. The camera feed quickly shut off, leaving a black screen in the room with the important people.
''Can we get another camera on?'' General Ross asked a nearby soldier.
''We are trying, sir,'' the soldier responded. ''The only cameras available are those outside the building.''
''Then swap to those. What the hell are you waiting for?'' Ross commanded, despite having a feeling about what was going to happen.
The soldier nodded when he heard something through his earpiece. After the line closed, his face started to pale.
Ross noticed the change and asked, ''What is it? Why am I still not seeing anything?''
''Sir...'' the soldier started, hesitant.
--
Somewhere else, Liam was flipping through the first pages on the mirror dimension when a news article popped up on his laptop.
The article detailed a large lawsuit between Tony Stark and the military. The military had sued Tony for breaching several national security laws in an attempt to gain access to the Iron Man suits he had created.
Liam read through the article with great interest. He hadn't seen this happen during any of the movies. Not everything could be shown in the movies, and Liam knew that. It also made sense for the military to keep going after Tony's equipment at any chance they could.
'Stark and his peak lawyers will win this anyway,' Liam thought, losing interest quickly. He closed his laptop and went back to reading the mirror dimension book.
A few weeks passed by with Liam keeping the same routine. He would start his day by reading, and whenever he felt like he couldn't read anymore, he experimented on the extensions he had learned for the Eldritch Constructs spell.
Waking up once again after a night with whispers as background noise, Liam knew that today was the day to go to Wakanda. He dressed up, and standing in front of the mirror, he reached out for the tiny horn on his head and thought back about the past few weeks.
He had finished reading through the entire book on the Mirror Dimension and also understood its contents. At the same time, he had also figured out how to make four of his Eldritch Constructs float. The other extension he had chosen, the lifeform spell, hadn't gone as smoothly.
That wasn't the only thing on his mind. The main question that held him was about his dreams, the whispers, Incursio's dimension, but most of all, his own body.
'Let's start from the beginning,' Liam thought, somewhat depressed. 'The dreams.'
He hadn't gotten another strange dream about the thug's family members again. On the contrary, he had multiple dreams about the men who had sacrificed everything for him. With that, the theory Alaric had told him about was certain.
The dreams showed memory pieces from their entire lives—not just fighting, but also love, friendship, and everyday activities. Liam had seen their families, their friends, where they lived, even the food they had for breakfast.
Then came the whispers. They had stayed the exact same, only appearing before and after the dreams, same tone, same words.
'Then there's Incursio's dimension,' Liam thought, feeling worried. 'Alaric and the others still haven't reappeared. I wonder what happened. He did say a few weeks, after all.'
'And I feel like those have passed by now.'
He wanted more answers from them. He wanted to know more about how everything works and how they lived their lives, especially regarding his own body.
'But I can't just wait for them to reappear,' Liam thought. 'I need to start setting up the organization now. Before its too late.'
The reason Liam was worried about his own body had to do with what he had done three weeks ago.
He had taken one day off and spent the time visiting a low-tier dimensional tear and an intermediate one in preparation for Wakanda. Those tears both held one strange-looking species each, which Liam had captured with ease.
From the low-level tear, he had captured a simple Hellish Fiend from the Hell Dimension, and from the intermediate tear, he had captured a dark grey, wolf-like creature. The creature, a Duskfang, came from the Umbral Wilds, a shadowy dimension.
'What came after,' Liam thought, smiling bitterly, 'was the problem.'
Although he had caught the creatures themselves completely without using Incursio, he couldn't resist the opportunity to absorb energy from a dimension he hadn't yet encountered.
He summoned Incursio around him and absorbed the energy from the dimensional tear before closing it. The absorbed energy was dark grey, before it was absorbed by the white cells within his armor. Within minutes, with the armor finishing on some small changes, he felt a sensation that something hadn't been there before.
His armor slowly started to reflect light, making it almost invisible to the naked eye. Then it slowly returned to normal when Liam asked it to.
'Without attacking someone, it would be hard to spot me,' he thought at the time, happy with his improvement.
Then, he unsummoned Incursio, after doing so, his entire body started feeling a little itchy before he felt a sharp pain coming from his arm and head.
While scratching his body, Liam looked at his arm and saw that the scales had returned, covering the entire arm. He quickly reached out to the top of his head and found what he had already suspected.
''My horn has completely grown back again,'' Liam muttered, sad. ''It was gone a few days ago, too.''
He had only been in the armor for a short time, he had not imagined this would happen at all. But while wearing it, he had felt incredibly comfortable like last time—almost making him want to keep it on forever.