After Harry Osborn left, Stark Tower fell into silence.
Because Tony had originally thought Bante would be the one coming tonight. As a genius he personally acknowledged, Tony had taken Bante's warning very seriously.
But to his surprise, the one who showed up was Harry Osborn. Even more unexpectedly, Bante had Harry leave behind a disc-shaped insignia for him.
Of course, Tony recognized that mark.
"The Celestial Craft Society..."
"Could Bante Parker be connected to the Celestial Craft Society?"
Tony rubbed his chin and sank into thought.
It could be said that, on this Earth, he was the first person to realize the Celestial Craft Society existed, and also the first superhero to fight one of Bante's alien heroes.
It was just that, back then, the Celestial Craft Society did not even exist yet.
"JARVIS, disconnect the external network, then pull up the file. 'Alien.'"
Following Bante's instructions, Tony cut off the outside internet and opened JARVIS's local files.
"At once, sir."
JARVIS calmly opened a folder, and a virtual display was projected into midair. Several oddly shaped monsters appeared in snapshots taken from different angles.
First was XLR8, then Heatblast...
To be fair, Tony's photography skills were pretty solid. That shot of Heatblast descending from the sky actually looked incredibly cool.
Aside from those two, which Tony had seen with his own eyes, there were also Four Arms and Diamondhead. Those two came from internal S.H.I.E.L.D. files.
Tony had hacked those out himself.
Nick Fury, that guy whose heart was even blacker than his face, had talked about sharing intelligence with Tony, yet he had kept dead silent about encountering Four Arms and Diamondhead in New Mexico.
That black braised egg was shady as hell!
But right now, what Tony cared about was what kind of connection Bante had with that alien organization.
Guessing was useless. He decided to immediately check the USB drive Bante had sent him.
The moment he plugged it into the computer, the data was read.
The footage began to play.
"Security footage?"
Tony froze for a moment, then his pupils shrank sharply.
The timestamp on the video read December 16, 1991. That was the year Harry Potter had just started at Hogwarts... no, this was the day his parents were murdered.
A murder...
A deliberate murder!
He saw the masked man coldly strangle Howard Stark to death, then fire several emotionless shots into the car at his mother.
Finally, the killer raised his head and looked straight at the overhead camera. Those icy eyes seemed to pierce through the machine, through nearly twenty years of time, and meet Tony's gaze at that very moment.
That dark gun barrel seemed aimed straight at Tony's heart.
Bang!
The screen shattered instantly.
Tony's body swayed violently as if he had actually been shot. Bracing himself against the table, he turned deathly pale.
"Sir?"
"I'm fine."
Tony felt his breathing turn fast and heavy.
His head spun. He felt as though he had lost too much blood. His legs went weak, and he collapsed into his chair.
At that moment, he did not care in the slightest about those so-called aliens or that so-called organization and whatever unspeakable scheme they might have. All he wanted was to find the bastard who murdered his parents right now and blow his head off with a repulsor blast!
"Immediately," he said after taking a deep breath, "call Bante Parker right now!"
"Sir, Harry Osborn reminded you not to contact Mr. Parker for the time being."
Instead of carrying out Tony's order at once, JARVIS voiced a rare objection.
That helped Tony calm down a little.
The key issue was whether S.H.I.E.L.D. could be trusted.
When Harry Osborn left, he had specifically told Tony that Bante was currently at S.H.I.E.L.D. and that he should not call him right away.
That meant Bante, at the very least, did not trust S.H.I.E.L.D. that much.
So Tony sat in his chair, anxiously shaking one leg. After a while, he stood up and opened another bottle.
On the other side, inside S.H.I.E.L.D., Bante had finally finished arguing with Nick Fury, then proposed touring the Helicarrier.
"I've never even been on a cruise ship in my life. Never thought I'd one day get to board an aircraft carrier," Bante said. "Can you let us look around?"
"Sure."
Nick agreed without hesitation, but he still added, "I should make this clear first. Not every area is open for viewing. There are plenty of places on the carrier that are classified."
"Understandable."
Bante nodded at once and said, "Same as my company. Not every floor is open to outsiders."
Nick was a little surprised. He found that Bante had suddenly become far more reasonable.
As for that, Bante's explanation was simple.
"Come on, I'm already being pretty decent here. If I skipped knocking, bypassed every security system, and sat down in your office, can you honestly say you wouldn't have every agent in the place pointing guns at me?"
"Besides, if I really wanted to kill you, I could twist your head off on the spot."
After thinking about it, Nick Fury felt that was true enough.
Then he remembered what Bante had mentioned earlier, about wanting to study the Tesseract.
Ever since he had secretly restarted the Cube project to develop weapons, the research progress had been painfully slow. If Bante joined the research team, it might lead to some unexpected breakthroughs.
Still, he only thought about it.
There was no way he would actually invite Bante to participate.
As a spy, Nick Fury was not stupid enough to expose all his cards to someone he still could not trust.
In his eyes, Bante Parker had two problems. First, Nick could not completely trust him. Second, he could not completely control him.
Since the Avengers was an alliance, that meant there was no real hard restraint behind it.
Nick could not count as Bante's direct superior, nor could he afford to hire an employee worth hundreds of billions.
"Let the Captain show you around," Nick Fury said. "It just so happens he'll be the future leader of the Avengers."
Handing superhero business over to a superhero was exactly what Bante wanted.
If there was anyone inside that den of snakes called S.H.I.E.L.D. that Bante wanted to win over, Steve Rogers was naturally one of them.
That was exactly what he had meant when he spoke to Peter before.
A banner!
A righteous and unquestionable banner!
More than that, Captain America was also a powerful combat asset.
Leaving aside his absurd fifty-fifty matchup trait, the current unworthy Thor could only swing a sledgehammer at a construction site, and since the real Mjolnir was not in New Mexico, then it had obviously already been taken into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody.
Winning over Captain America was practically the same as winning over a Thor.
Under the banner of joining the Avengers, Bante moved on two fronts, sending Harry to contact Tony Stark, the unofficial Avengers member, while preparing to turn Captain America to his side.
Originally, Peter could have handled this himself, just like Harry had gone to contact Tony.
The problem was that Peter was too naive and too pure. He was not even smooth when lying. If Bante really threw him alone into an agent nest, that group of vipers would probably strip him clean down to the bone.
Nick letting them move separately was exactly what Bante had wanted.
But in reality, things were not as perfect as Bante had imagined.
Although Nick Fury said Captain America would take them on a tour, the truth was that no matter where Bante and the others went, one or two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents would just so happen to pass by from time to time.
Clearly, they were being watched.
But Bante could not determine who had sent those people to monitor them.
It could be Nick Fury. It could be Hydra. It could even be spies from some other organization.
A lot of people would be interested in Spider-Man's identity.
Seeing that, Bante had no choice but to put away what he had originally planned to show Captain America and switch to other topics instead.
"You know, Captain, when Spider-Man told me you were still alive, I thought he was dreaming."
Hearing that, Steve smiled.
"Sometimes I feel like I'm dreaming too."
"Hard to get used to, huh?"
"Yeah. The world has changed too fast. Back then, my enemies were just soldiers. Now I have to deal with all kinds of monsters, robots... and modern life too. You know, even the bed they arranged for me is softer now. Sometimes it feels like I'm sinking into cotton. Every now and then I wake up in the middle of the night and think I'm lying in the clouds."
Perhaps because Steve knew Bante and Peter were both still young, he let down his guard a little. When speaking with them, he was not particularly guarded.
"Post-war psychological syndrome?"
"Not really. I'd say it's more like an old man stumbling into an era that doesn't belong to him and having no idea where he fits."
Steve laughed at himself.
Bante could understand that feeling.
It was like Li Hongzhang visiting the United States in the late Qing dynasty and being stunned by the sheer modernity of the city.
An old relic of a bygone era, not quite knowing how to use a cell phone, only able to write down every new and unfamiliar thing by hand in a notebook, then suddenly stepping into a dazzling city.
"I think you still look pretty young, Captain. Don't say that. I'm actually a fan."
Bante said it with a smile.
Meanwhile, on the other side, Nick Fury, who had been listening to their conversation the entire time, let out a cold sneer.
"A lie."
"Over the past ten-plus years, Bante Parker's phone browsing history contains only a handful of entries related to Captain America. But his searches for 'Captain America's ass' are a lot more frequent."
After hearing that, Natasha expressionlessly switched off the comms, then rolled her eyes.
"Boss, sometimes there's a reason people don't like you."
"Don't get it twisted. This is for humanity's safety," Nick Fury said at once. "Didn't you hear the way he was trying to cozy up to the Captain?"
"Maybe he just wanted something to talk about. Otherwise, was he supposed to say, 'Hey, old man, I couldn't care less about your life story'? That'd be pretty rude." Barton chuckled. "Captain's going to be their leader eventually anyway. Getting a little closer isn't a problem."
Back to Bante and Captain America.
Bante could clearly sense that Steve was actually very lost in this new world.
He was at a loss, but beneath that, there was also loneliness and fear.
The people he knew were already gone. And this prosperous new world might not even need Captain America anymore.
That was why, the first time Nick Fury told him Hydra still had surviving remnants, aside from anger, Steve had even felt a faint trace of relief.
It meant he was still useful.
It meant this old relic, frozen for seventy years, still had a place to prove his worth.
/-\
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