Obadiah Stane frowned; the information contained in this statement left him even more confused.
What does that mean? She doesn't think much of Tony? Is there any woman in this World who doesn't think much of you?
That's not flattery.
In Obadiah Stane's view, Tony Stark had almost everything: youth, good looks, a genius mind, immense wealth, and the position of becoming the sole controller of the World's largest arms conglomerate.
With a man like that, what woman couldn't he get?
Tony set down his coffee cup and walked back to the motorcycle. "Alright, that's enough about Mavuika. He's just a friend. I helped him fix his bike because I wanted to, and that doesn't stop me from handling company business at the same time... Where were we? The procurement price for titanium alloy?"
Obadiah Stane wanted to say more, but seeing that Tony had already picked up his tools again, making it clear he didn't want to continue the topic, he could only shake his head and pull his attention back to the business documents.
"Fine, if you insist." Obadiah Stane opened the folder.
"But Tony, at least promise me, don't let him have access to any sensitive documents or designs. Company security must come first."
"Of course, of course," Tony replied casually.
...
After Mavuika left Stark Tower, he didn't call a car, nor did he go to the subway station.
He crossed two streets and turned into a quiet alley, where renovation materials and trash cans were piled up, completely empty in the early morning.
Mavuika took a step forward, and golden-red flames rose from beneath his feet, gently wrapping around his entire body.
These were not Burning flames, but a manifestation of pure energy—warm but not scorching, bright but not blinding.
In the flames, his form turned into a stream of light and shot up into the sky.
Mavuika controlled his energy output, minimizing the impact to only a faint hum produced as the air was disturbed.
A few seconds later, he had already passed through the clouds and entered the stratosphere.
Below, New York City looked like an exquisite model; the street grid was clearly visible, and Central Park resembled a green emerald.
Above, the sky gradually shifted from azure to deep blue, and finally to the black of space, where stars began to appear.
Mavuika continued to ascend. The atmosphere became thinner and thinner, and the temperature dropped sharply, but for his Asgardian divine body, this posed no threat at all.
He didn't even need to deliberately maintain protection; the power of the Eternal Flame naturally formed a stable life-support field around him.
Upon entering low Earth orbit, he stopped and hovered in the vacuum.
Here, his perception became even clearer.
He turned into a golden-red meteor and streaked through the vacuum, moving too fast for the naked eye to track.
At the same time, above a desert somewhere on Earth, a uniquely shaped spaceship was ascending.
Inside the spaceship, the atmosphere was tense and complex.
In the cockpit sat five people and a cat.
Nick Fury gripped the seat armrests tightly. This was his first time riding in an aircraft capable of flying out of the atmosphere, and the pilot was a former Kree warrior who had just regained her memories and whose emotions were still unstable.
He looked at the ground getting further and further away outside the window, trying hard to keep his expression calm.
Carol Danvers, a U.S. Air Force pilot, was focusing on piloting the spaceship.
Her movements were still a bit rusty, like remembering how to ride a bicycle after a long time, but her muscle memory was returning rapidly.
"Altitude eighty thousand feet, about to leave the atmosphere," she reported, her voice filled with suppressed excitement.
Sitting in the co-pilot seat was Maria Rambeau, Carol's once best friend and one of the few people who had never given up on searching for her.
Maria looked at Carol's profile, her eyes filled with relief and a smile on her lips.
In the back seat, Talos, the leader of the Skrulls who had come to Earth, had green skin and was rubbing his hands together in some anxiety.
The last passenger was an orange cat, currently lying lazily on Maria's lap, yawning, appearing completely unconcerned about all of this.
A few hours ago, all of this would have been unimaginable.
Fury recalled the crazy experience he had just had, starting from meeting Carol, tracking the Skrull that attacked them, and discovering that Carol had a file in S.H.I.E.L.D. and was actually an Earthling who had been kidnapped and brainwashed by the Kree.
And the Skrulls were actually refugees fleeing the Kree's pursuit; they had only come to Earth to find the light-speed engine research data left behind by Dr. Hansen...
The truth was revealed layer by layer, like peeling an onion, and each layer was more shocking than the last.
And now, they were heading toward the spaceship where Talos's people were hiding.
That ship was parked in low Earth orbit, disguised as space debris, with over twenty Skrull refugees inside, waiting for a rescue that they didn't know when would arrive.
"We're almost there," Talos said, pointing to a dot on the navigation screen.
"It's right at that location. The visual camouflage is active; it can't be seen by radar or the naked eye."
Carol nodded, adjusted her course, and the spaceship smoothly crossed the Kármán line, entering outer space.
Earth was behind them, like a giant blue gem, covered with swirling white clouds.
"I see it," Carol said.
In the seemingly empty space ahead, a circle of faint ripples suddenly appeared, as if heat waves were distorting the scene.
As the spaceship approached, the ripples gradually expanded, revealing the outline of a massive spaceship.
It didn't look like any human spacecraft; it had smooth lines and a metallic sheen on its surface.
There were many observation windows on the hull, some of which emitted warm light as it floated quietly in the starry sky.
"My god..." Maria whispered in amazement.
A look of relief appeared on Talos's face. "Six years... We've been hiding here for six years."
As the spaceship slowly approached the Skrull mothership, Carol was just about to send a docking request when, suddenly, her eyes widened.
"What is that?" She pointed to a dot next to the mothership.
Everyone crowded to the window.
At the bow of the Skrull mothership, there was a person.
No, not attached to the hull, but floating in space, wearing no spacesuit, without any life-support equipment.
His body radiated a faint golden light, and his long golden-red hair seemed to burn like flames in the vacuum. He was wearing an ordinary leather jacket and jeans, as if he had just been teleported directly from the streets of New York to outer space.
That person was standing with his back to them, reaching out to touch the outer shell of the Skrull mothership.
Talos said nervously, "Who is he? How can he be in space?"
Fury narrowed his eyes; the distance was still too great to see clearly.
Just then, the person turned around.
Mavuika saw their spaceship. He didn't seem surprised at all; instead, he smiled and waved, as if he had run into an old friend on the street.
Carol's expression was tense. "Be careful! He might be Kree!"
Being able to traverse the Universe with just his physical body clearly meant he was no ordinary person. Even in the Kree Empire, Carol had never seen such an existence.