In MCU with One for All -Chapter 10

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]

Kamar Taj [2008]

–Jamie Bell–

With a grim face, he took in the darkness of his bedroom, illuminated only by the glow of the burning red portal behind him that closed with a twitch of his hand. It had been another week since he had discovered a new facet of his powers, the ability to absorb Dimensional energy as well.

In that little time, he had learned two very important things, aside from Portals, the most useful at this stage of his life.

Body reinforcement and Eldritch magic.

After getting a decent handle of these two types of magic, he felt confident enough to return home. Now, Master Wong rightfully warned him that returning in peak condition, without a single scratch on him, would only increase the suspicions. 

Apparently, he was not unique in the sense of people dropping everything they had, on the news of someone offering healing and staying in Kamar Taj for the entire course of the healing, never contacting anyone in their lives.

So, when they returned, it only resulted in suspicion, wariness, caution, and sometimes even outright imprisonment, not to mention the rejection from their close ones. It was a facet of life that many others who found Kamar Taj had to deal with.

Miraculous healing, while a very good thing for any patient, was not as well accepted by Western Standards, at least right now. That was why many of the people who healed themselves using Sorcery have found refuge in either Kamar Taj itself or in areas around Asia, where the practice is more accepted or at least not persecuted as witchcraft. Of Course, exceptions exist in all cases but the lack of heavy digital penetration in poorer parts of Asia gives people a blanket of anonymity.

Sighing, he took a look at the dusty–well, everything and began rummaging through the wardrobes, taking out clothes that had started to smell by now. After all, it had been over 20 days since he was gone. After a certain point, he just gave up and stepped back, letting the conjured Eldritch hands do the grabbing as he found a rat in the dresser.

Soon, everything was cleared up from the wardrobe as he finally got to the safe. One thing he learned about the eldritch summons was that they were only as strong as the amount and stability of the energy he could provide. Now, with the energy coming from within, from OFA, that made things very simple for him.

The conjured hands worked and felt like actual hands to him, with enough feedback that he could open the safe with the conjured hands, and he could keep them strong enough to twist the entire safe like a pretzel if he wanted to.

He could do neither of those things if he drew energy straight from the Universe, instead of letting it sit in his container. He tried doing the thing that inverters in homes do, i.e., let the electricity flow into the inverter and then into the house so that there is uninterrupted power all the time but for some reason, it did not work.

Shaking his head, he stepped close and began taking everything that was in the safe. It was not money, that was all in the bank and in his investments. No, it was an old Hard drive, along with a new SSD, both holding copies of the same data, some property papers, along with a key to a storage unit.

Storing them in the Bag of Holding, which was an honest to god real thing in this universe, he stepped back and opened another portal with a twitch of his finger, leading to the woods that he remembered parking his car in.

It was nice, being able to open portals with a single thought, as long as he had the reserves to do it. The ratio, right now, was not favourable to him, not by a long shot. He needed to meditate at least for an hour to recharge the Dimensional Energy he just used to open two portals, and use Conjured hands using medium amounts of strength.

It was a pretty steep cost but he was confident that he could increase the gain in Dimensional energy absorption by an order of magnitude the more time he spent meditating. It was oddly dependent on the state of his mind, as if a clogged mind would take longer to get the flow of Dimensional energy into the container that was OFA. The mechanics of his powers were very odd, because last he checked, there was nothing in his DNA that would show him being an enhanced human. He studied a bit about Blood tests and did some self testing and the result showed him to be completely normal.

So, where the energy went, where the powers came from and where they resided, he had no idea. How the energy that was incident on his body was absorbed and stored in OFA, the mechanics of it, how the energy would immediately disappear after entering his body, up to a certain threshold, all of it.

It was all very blank for him, so he didn’t dwell on it too much and started hiking towards the door. 

Switching to Dimensional Energy from the Universe instead of OFA was always a jarring experience, as he grunted after feeling the energy flow turn from buttery smooth to a drive on a road that was more potholes than road. Still, it was good training so he kept Body Reinforcement on and walked towards the sound of cars.

It was very late, about 2 in the morning, and the fact that there were still cars on the road was odd but nothing he needed to be concerned about. Body Reinforcement did more than just make him tougher and stronger. It also enhanced his senses, not by a lot but even a little enhancement over his stellar health was more than enough to detect any threat in the woods.

He had to say, even a little time spent in Kamar Taj and seeing the wonders of Sorcery had dimmed his fear of the dark a lot. Sure, he now knew that a lot of stuff that went bump in the night and those were stuff of nightmares but he also knew that Canada was famous in the supernatural circle to only house Yetis and some other snow based magical creatures that lived further inland, nowhere near Vancouver.

With measured steps, he finally arrived near the road and sighed upon seeing no sign of his car. “Well, there goes the easy way.”

_____xx______

[After 2 days]

“Are you ok?” Was the first question that the tenants asked him. The question was valid, because he was walking with a cane and had bandages all over his right arm.

“Yes, Patricia, I am okay, I guess.”

“Oh my god, where have you been? We filed a police report and everything. They found your car but no sign of you,” She helped him walk. He felt a little guilty because he was totally faking everything but the poor woman was too busy fretting to notice.

“Yeah, I had a, well, the police called it ‘The worst way to experience a midlife crisis’ but I am back now. Thank you for taking care of the lawn, don’t worry about this month’s rent, alright? Bye!”

He waved at her slightly and then closed the door. Sighing, he conjured some tools, to get the place clean because he had to maintain the disguise, for a few more days now.

As it turns out, Kamar Taj was not isolated from the rest of the world. As the world moved towards globalisation and every single thing was turned into a business, creating a hyper capitalist society with underlying themes of socialism, communism, and whatnot according to individual countries, Kamar Taj had not been sitting idle.

Kamar Taj, through many Sorcerer Families, because, yes, those were a thing now, held a significant amount of capital throughout the world. Having a leader who could see the future was pretty much cheating when it came to the world of capitalism.

Kamar Taj, through those same Families, ran a shadow network of resources that spanned the globe, including the two Snowy and remote continents. The resources ranged from basic stuff like secured housing, food, water, money, jobs to specialised services, such as faking a 3 week long solo adventure in the woods. 

The ease with which everything in the police station, and the hospital was handled told him that they were pretty deep into the world economy. No wonder Master Wong was confident that his return to society could be handled pretty easily by them.

He wondered why they did not do the same for the many people who end up settling permanently around Kathmandu but that was not his question to ask right now.

Maybe they did settle most people, and the rest stayed willingly? Or they only provided the service for members who can fight well, like him?

He shook his head and sat on the sofa while the hands did the cleaning, powered by Dimensional Energy this time instead of his personal reserves. He had a lot of work to do, but after some thinking, he realised that he could not really abandon this identity.

Move to some remote part of the world, spend most of his time training, live on the rent, and gather his own essential stuff? Sure.

And that was what his task was going to be for the next month or so. The context of a mid life crisis will go along nicely when he reveals his plan to move across the world, and start anew.

He couldn’t think of a single person who would look beyond the pale at his situation when he would inevitably declare moving. Perks of being a loner, he supposed.

He didn't even know if he had his job or the bank fired him after he was unreachable for a week or so.

Didn’t matter, none of it did. He supposed all of this was just an exercise in nostalgia then.

Even then, as he sat on the sofa, looking at the high speed cleaning happening, he resolved to never let himself be caught off guard, to continue training so that when the day came, he would be able to do something without dying in return.