In MCU with One for All -Chapter 17

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Disclaimer - All the usual Yada Yada Yada. I don’t own any rights to any characters in this fic, save for my OCs. Marvel owns them. Don’t sue me.

Earth - 16969 [MCU AU]

Rio De Janeiro[2009] 

–Jamie Bell–

He sighed, sitting against the cell tower, keeping an eye on the lit up window, to make sure that Bruce did not leave without his notice. Not having enhanced eyesight meant all he could make out were vague movements in the shack, as well as the lights being on. The solar panel on the roof of that shack, something he noticed many other shacks had as well, meant that Bruce did not have to worry much about grid failure, even if he was working with a very small amount of electricity.

Pros and cons when it comes to living off the grid with an energy source that is off for a third of the day. Thankfully, Bruce was in a very tropical country that received sunlight for the majority of the day.

There was no time duration given to him for this mission but he had a hunch that shit was about to go sideways soon enough. He just had to wait for it. The bottling plant worked 24/7 in three shifts, with all the shifts being manned with an equal number of people, which he figured out by observing the number of people still moving in and out of that factory.

It should take some time for Ross and his people to track down that bottle to this very factory but as soon as they had the location, the optimal move would be to move during the day. It would seem a little counterintuitive, especially since darkness was the perfect environment to ambush an unwitting target but that was only applicable when they were talking about normal humans.

When they were talking about someone who could turn into the Hulk? Yeah, the advantage of the dark turned moot because the Hulk did not care about the darkness but the soldiers would just panic more and more as the Hulk tore through their forces.

Which meant that they would investigate during the night and then ambush Bruce during the day. Ross might be an unhinged megalomaniac but he did not get to his position while being a mindless brute. He would know this and plan accordingly.

Which also meant that he would have to prepare. And for him to prepare accordingly, he had to choose on the best course of action and after a lot of deliberation, taking into account Bruce’s inherent distrust of everything around him, Ross’ paranoia and obsession that would have him stop at nothing to bring Bruce in, and Kamar Taj’s resources and calming environment that should help Bruce, he chose the option he thought would balance it all, despite feeling a little scummy.

He would wait for Ross to ambush Bruce, then swoop in to remove Bruce from the equation, before leaving the scene entirely. He was not going to show himself to Ross, no, that would be stupid. No need to take unnecessary risks.

He had the Dimensional Energy manipulation down to a science right now but even then, his control whenever he used up his internal reserves was unmatched. It was iterative, as if the control he had over normal Dimensional Energy would always be lower than the control he had over his internal reserves, which was nice since he only had to work on one thing and it would automatically improve the other.

For example, he needed to concentrate really hard to make a portal without making the corresponding waving motion if he relied on normal Dimensional Energy flowing all around him. Contrast that to using his internal reserves, where he could just will a portal into existence and not just that, he could move that along a single axis with ease.

Portals were oddly restricted like that. He could not move the portals in a three dimensional plane, as if they were not rule breaking hacks themselves. So, all he had to do was wait for Bruce to come face to face with the soldiers and then pull the portal onto Bruce, transporting him straight to…where exactly?

The Mirror Dimension was out since that would only exacerbate Bruce’s panic, but–

He paused, freezing as he saw a paper flutter down right in front of him. Knowing that there was no way that it could have happened naturally, he snatched the piece of paper and…

Transporting him to the courtyard will be fine. I will be waiting for him.

“Huh,” he said out loud, grinning. Well, that solved most of his problems. For one, he did not have to ask for her permission to see if Bruce could live in Kamar Taj despite not having the ability to use Sorcery, as far as he knew.

Then again, that was just stuff he learned from Fanon. Who knows if Bruce could somehow learn Magic and become so much more dangerous than before because in his opinion, Bruce had more chances of learning Sorcery than Tony who had a much more rigid mindset, at least at this point in time. 

Maybe time would mellow Tony’s mind a bit, making it much more accepting of things that just did not fit in with his world view but as of right now, despite being a marked improvement from his fratboy days, Tony Stark was still a closed minded individual, at least when it came to magic.

Or so he thought. Only way they would find out was if Tony Stark ever came to Kamar Taj with an earnest need to learn but doing that would probably open its own set of worms that would just end up in another series of problems.

He was trying to avoid problems, not actively pursue them so no, outing himself was out of the question. So no contact with Ross.

Just like that, his decision was done and he had to thank the Ancient One for it, because she was one of the few who could actually confront and disarm Hulk, without doing any permanent damage or further enraging him.

The ejection of the Astral Spirit was a neat trick, something he wanted to learn one day. He was taking things slow, one by one and anything to do with Astral Spirits, especially those of others, was an advanced thing, something he would touch once he was confident with the basics.

Them being the art of running away, i.e, portals and body reinforcement to run really fast.

The ability to defend himself, i.e., body reinforcement, eldritch shape summoning for handy weapons and the ability to use said weapons.

And lastly but certainly not the least, the ability to hide himself. Stealth was going to be very important going forward. He did actually have a real identity in the world and despite not having any people or friends he could call his own, he would like for his identity to exist.

Invisibility spells were already something he had looked into but without diving into his internal reserves, he was unable to cast the Invisibility spell for longer than 10 minutes at a time, after which his focus seemed to fizzle out. Plus, this spell just covered the visible light spectrum.

The highest tier ones could shift him slightly out of phase with reality, making him exist in a weird state of life that would shrug off all but the most potent sensory magicks. 

Even the middle tier of those stealthy spells could rebuff most technology, which was the spells he was looking for, something that would help him move about the world without any issues. Once he had those spells down, he would actually start making some real moves.

Mordo thought it would take him at least a year to get that spell down but just so he could prove Mordo wrong, he was going to get that spell working in less than 6 months. Unrealistic, he knew but what could he say? He had begun developing a mean competitive streak with the other Masters here in Kamar Taj, especially the ones who were roughly the same age as himself. Kaecilius was even younger and already much stronger than himself, a fact that annoyed him immensely.

He aimed to be just as strong, if not the strongest Master in Kamar Taj, save for the Ancient One, by the time Loki came knocking on Earth’s door using the Tesseract as the backdoor. 

He was still undecided if he wanted Loki to open that portal or not in New York, thinking of the advantages of having it known to the world about aliens and the disadvantages of an actual alien invasion with humanity being caught with their pants down.

Suddenly, his thoughts and the magnitude of their implications clicked for him, and he began chuckling.

Look at me?!

A sliver of power in his hands now and he was already beginning to contemplate the results of a battle that beings on the same level as Thor and Hulk could not stop.

Shaking his head, he stood up and began stretching. It would seem that the little amount of power he had amassed had begun getting to his head.

The vision of that family, dead, staring at him with empty eyes, flashed in front of his eyes, making him wince. 

No. Never again.

He would never be caught as unprepared as that day ever again. Never in his life. He was not going to be satisfied and get a big head with just this meagre amount of power that he had gotten for himself.

It was a sobering reminder to know that even beings like Hulk and Thor, people on or near the pinnacle of the power levels of this universe, had suffered just as much, if not more, than any unpowered human unlucky enough to be born in zones of constant war and strife.

Where was he compared to them? Nowhere.