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From Mumbai, they flew directly to Perth International Airport in Western Australia.
The journey took eleven hours and ten minutes—nearly the operational limit of Kingo's private jet.
Kingo didn't hesitate. Once flight clearance was secured, they went straight through. It wasn't his first trip to Australia.
After clearing immigration in Perth, they refueled and continued inland, landing at a remote regional airstrip.
Karan Patel, ever efficient, retrieved a Ford Explorer from a storage hangar—one of the early SUVs that had defined the segment's popularity.
Because they were traveling with a tiger, the third-row seats were folded flat. The entire rear cargo space became Katie's territory.
Karan drove.
Henry and Kingo sat in the second row, continuing the conversation that had barely paused for the entire journey.
They had talked endlessly.
At first, film—Hollywood versus Bollywood, production culture, evolving cinematic language. Henry elaborated on digital filmmaking's future, emphasizing how computer-generated effects would expand storytelling possibilities.
Kingo even asked how Indian cinema might break into international markets.
On that topic, Henry was cautious.
Success had no universal formula. If it did, those who knew it would never publish it openly. What could be shared publicly were only conservative strategies—the kind that might succeed, and at worst avoid catastrophic failure.
Cultural barriers were formidable. Humor did not always translate. Emotional resonance depended heavily on shared historical context.
A crude example Henry mentioned:
An American man tells a foreign woman, "You look like a peach," and his friends burst into lewd laughter.
If the woman lacks familiarity with American slang, she might interpret it literally—sweet, pleasant, attractive. But in certain contexts, it carries overt sexual innuendo.
In American slapstick or raunchy comedies, audiences laugh.
Export that scene abroad, and reactions split—confusion or offense.
The reverse is equally true.
One approach for global crossover was packaging Western narrative frameworks in local aesthetics—lowering the comprehension barrier for Western audiences.
But Henry doubted that was the answer Kingo wanted.
So he declined to pretend expertise.
---
Beyond cinema, Henry learned far more about the Eternals' hidden history.
Their battles with the Deviants were indeed central—but far from the whole story.
The Deviants were intelligent beasts—no culture, driven purely by instinct to eradicate humanity. That alone justified the Celestials' deployment of the Eternals.
Yet they did not only interact with humans and Deviants.
In the 10th century, the Eternals migrated westward from Mesopotamia to Europe, and eventually to the Americas to eliminate the final Deviant strongholds.
Unexpectedly, they received assistance from an Asgardian—Thor Odinson.
After their final victory, they settled among the Maya civilization and were worshiped as gods—though in truth they were merely waiting for Celestial recall orders.
Henry suspected only Ajak truly knew the complete mission parameters. He wondered when Ikaris had been informed.
Then, in the 11th century—
War.
Between the Eternals and the Inhumans.
Yes—the Inhumans. The genetically modified humans engineered by the Kree as experimental super-soldiers. Eventually abandoned when the Kree Supreme Intelligence deemed them unnecessary.
The Inhumans had isolated themselves on the island of Attilan in the North Atlantic, developing advanced technology in secrecy.
Once the Deviants were eradicated, the Inhumans apparently decided they were ready to rule Earth.
They acted accordingly.
Had they remained confined to their island, the Eternals might have ignored them.
But conquest campaigns changed the equation.
To the Eternals, the Inhumans were Kree interference—non-native constructs.
They intervened decisively.
The outcome?
Most of the Inhumans elevated Attilan into space, relocating to the Blue Area of the Moon to avoid annihilation.
The Eternals resumed their vigil.
Ten of them.
Ten beings forced an entire advanced civilization into retreat.
The implication of that power was obvious.
Though, as Henry noted privately, perhaps that was before figures like Black Bolt had emerged as overwhelming anomalies.
Inhuman descendants remained scattered across Earth—but without Terrigen crystals, they could not awaken.
The Eternals chose not to exterminate them, as they had the Deviants.
Unawakened, they were simply human.
---
For centuries, the Eternals still interacted openly with humanity.
Some were revered as gods.
Others as sages.
Others as prophets.
That explained the scattered historical records Henry had found.
Their tension with mutants, however, stemmed from something more psychological.
In earlier eras, mutants awakening powers often developed god-complexes.
Those who believed themselves divine inevitably challenged those worshiped as divine.
Eternals did not adhere to "turn the other cheek."
They responded decisively.
Fortunately, ancient communication networks were primitive. Mutants were less numerous and less coordinated than in the modern age.
Thus most Eternal lives remained peaceful.
But whenever a newly awakened mutant arose nearby—especially an arrogant one—conflict was nearly inevitable.
The pattern created a sort of survivorship bias:
Flashy mutants sought them out—and were defeated.
Quiet mutants concealed themselves and lived unnoticed.
The observable data then simplified into a crude conclusion:
Mutants who challenged Eternals were crushed.
Which further hardened Eternal prejudice.
Kingo carefully framed mutant interference as one of the reasons the Eternals eventually retreated into obscurity.
Henry didn't press.
He had no interest in prying into wounds for the sake of "truth."
But he now understood far more about this world:
Deviants
Inhumans
Mutants
And the layered conflicts beneath human history
The picture of Earth was far more complex than he had assumed.
And far less stable.
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