Marvel Reborn: Gems Of Infinite Potential

Vibranium was an interesting metal, even if it made almost zero damn sense. That was my opinion, even ignoring how Wakanda basically used it like magic.

Given that I had no specialists or super scientists focused on the metal, and that it was f.u.c.k.i.n.g cool, I had been spending my free time in my lab studying it ever since the theft was successful. Those studies had started off fairly easy but rapidly hit a brick wall simply because trying to examine the metal with anything directly wasn't working. Even the basic microscope failed, given that the metal was absolutely black and absorbed every drop of radiation that impacted it without seemingly any issue; it simply did not reflect anything. In the end, I had to resort to developing specialized spells that would let me examine an object's molecular structure by basically cheating and reading the information direct from the universe.

While I was working on that spell, using two months of complex math and raids on the Ancient One's library, I resorted to more crude methods of discovery. Things like putting a piece of vibranium into a hydraulic press and letting it go until the press broke, or dropping a bit into an industrial kiln to try and melt it. Shaping the metal wasn't particularly hard given that it was publicly available information. You just needed to hit it with very specific levels of electricity and kinetic energy at the same time, and you could set up a resonance that caused the molecular bonds (which were more energy structures than actual matter) to temporarily shut down. The problem was that this method only worked with pure vibranium; once it was alloyed with anything else, you also needed a way to destroy the physical structure provided by the other metal, while at the same time you broke the vibrainum's bonds, or the structure would stay intact.

Smithing the alloy wasn't hard: just break the vibranium down and pour it into a liquefied sample of the metal you wanted to fuse it with. Managing an even distribution was incredibly difficult - if at all possible - but it wasn't really necessary. The most effective means I had found was to encase incredibly small nodules of vibranium around spheres of titanium or steel and then weld the outer shells together to create the macro scale object. While almost infinitely weaker than pure vibranium, it was also much easier to work with. The outer shell would transfer energy to the vibranium core, which would absorb it in staggering amounts, but if you dumped in too much energy too fast, then you could exceed the ability to the shell material to propagate the energy into the vibranium, and the shell would break down.

All of this was interesting and would prove quite useful in the future, but I knew I was missing something big. See, the energy that vibranium absorbed didn't just go away. It was all still there, locked away inside the super metal. I learned that I could use magic to tap that energy as a power source - it wasn't even that hard. But it was also pointless, given that I already had access to more raw power than I would ever probably need. What I wanted to know was how to tap into that energy and drain it out using science, because that would be a near-perfect ultimate battery.

Based on my experiments, you could detonate a nuke inside a sphere of pure vibranium, and it wouldn't even be detectable outside the sphere. To make such a sphere, detonate the nuke, and then you would have a battery with all of those megatons of raw energy locked up inside of it to be drawn out when needed. It was almost the ultimate fusion reactor, but the only problem was that I just couldn't figure out the energy extraction.

So far the only real use I had had with the super metal was to alloy it with titanium to make incredibly lightweight body armor inserts for Natasha and I. Nice enough, but not even on the radar of the powers that be.

That all really started to change when I finally had Pym's help, unwillingly willing as it may have been. Even if it was almost six months after I told Natasha to start planning the kidnapping.

The truth was that Hank Pym was a Tony Stark-level super-genius with billions of dollars in resources, was running one of the worlds premier technology development firms at the time, and was a trained SHIELD operative with years of active experience. Not to mention his virtually telepathic control over bugs and his exploitation of Pym Particles; I mean, the man carried a real tank around on a key chain for emergencies, and that was only one of his contingencies.

The first plan had been to just open a portal right in front of his car as he drove home from work one day, but that was scrapped as being both too public and too likely to backfire. I wasn't going to bet against him having that car tricked out with an entire arsenal that could wreak unholy havoc on whatever facility I dropped him off in. Not to mention that I wouldn't be surprised if he committed suicide before allowing himself to be captured, and that was just not a risk I found acceptable.

The next plan was getting a DNA sample from him to customize Kilgrave so that he could be enthralled in public without anyone else being the wiser. But that also had to be scrapped, simply because chances of detection were too high.

The plan that we actually went with had Natasha infiltrating Stanford, where Hope van Dyne was attending college. The master spy had Hope convinced she was her best friend in a matter of weeks, and setting up a blood donation drive that Hope donated to was completed within another month. From there, Natasha continued to play her role while the Kilgrave team worked to customize the virus so that it would only affect Hope or her father. All told, it was March of 2003 before everything was ready.

A little subtle encouragement and manipulation by Natasha had Hank Pym, his daughter Hope, her boyfriend - and Hank Pym's protégé - Darren Cross, and Natasha all on a flight in Hank's private jet to Hawaii for a little vacation. No one needed to know that when Natasha had spent the previous night at the Pym house, she had worn her Kilgrave perfume and enthralled both Pyms before getting Cross with a Kilgrave band-aid. Or that she carried an enchanted necklace that would allow me to open a portal anchored in relation to it, as opposed to the planet. And so it was that all of Hank Pym's Pym Particle data and paraphernalia went on a one-way trip to Mars the day before the family jet was tragically lost, crashed into the Pacific Ocean, for reasons that would never be suitably explained. The three of them and Natasha had gotten onto the plane, only to leave it courtesy of my portal over the Pacific Ocean, right before the enthralled pilots had crashed it straight into the ocean at full speed.

I had thought about shorting Pym Tech in a big way before the crash but decided it was too risky. SHIELD would look into this accident, and I didn't want any trails pointing to me. Instead, the second cousin who inherited all of his assets sold the company to me after a suitable period of time had passed for a low, if fair, price. Video of him with an underage girl might have been involved, but no one needed to know about that engineered blackmail. So long as he stayed nicely retired, living off his fortune in the Bahamas, no one ever would.

The first thing I did after getting Pym to Mars was to get the full formula and details for Pym Particles out of him. I was tempted to rename them to Bullshit Quantum Magic F.u.c.kery Particles, but that was just too long for easy use. Combining his knowledge with my knowledge of magic, and what I could get from several visits to the library at Kamar-Taj, it seemed that Pym Particles were engaging in serious dimensional/reality f.u.c.kery. The heart of the Pym Particle was some exotic matter/energy thing that basically acted as a portal into a reality where distance and mass were entirely mutable.

Frankly, Pym had invented almost an entirely new language to conceptualize the mechanics of the whole process, and even with his active assistance, it was still more months before I could really understand his explanations. Translating them into English was simply beyond me. Regardless, the two Pym's and Cross were kept doped up with Kilgrave injections and hemmed in with orders that kept them compliant. The three of them, along with several much more normally loyal scientists in my employ, had the Quantum Lab chugging along at full speed.

That drastically sped up all of my work simply because of what the Pym Particles made possible. Take a microscopic object and with Pym Particles, you could make it the size of a house, manipulate it on the macroscopic scale, and then return it to its natural size. The bullshit particles could allow you to perform molecular engineering literally by hand, or more importantly by robot assembly line. When you can make molecularly accurate computer processors by hand by essentially snapping Legos together, your computer hardware becomes much more powerful. And when you could use vibranium for heat sinks and cram an entire data center's worth of computer hardware into a thumb drive-sized device, that was only truer.

All of my projects had their projected timelines slashed thanks to the more powerful computer support. Maya wouldn't stop gushing over how she could now see in real-time the results of different Extremis variants on different living things. She still had no clue how to stabilize it, or to even limit the energy draw - and we still weren't sure where the energy for Extremis was even coming from - to a level that was survivable, but progress was being made.

I had found my vibranium research shooting forward now as well. Being able to expand individual vibranium molecules to the macro scale allowed for very precise manipulations of molecular structure, as I could now negate only the exact bonds I wanted to be negated. Precision alloying was now possible.

I couldn't manage vibranium nanites, not until I could figure out how to interact with the energy stored inside the individual vibranium molecules, but I could manage an excellent super-suit. I essentially created molecule scale tunnels out of vibranium and filled the hollow internal areas of those tunnels with the tech. Using various alloys, the suit was flexible enough not to interfere with even Natasha's agility, while still offering near total protection. It could even fly when shrunk, thanks to the wings and minuscule jets built-in. Radar stealth was inherent given that the vibranium simply absorbed any radiation that came into contact with it, but visual stealth didn't exist. Negative index of refraction materials were on my research list, but they just kept getting pushed down.

Natasha had just finished putting the completed suit, Black Widow 1.5, through its paces in training, and so I asked, "How do you like it?"

The helmet disappeared, a nifty use of Pym Particles to store it in the suits collar, and she had a massive smile on her face. "I love it. The protection is nice, but the stealth advantages of the size-change are extraordinary. With this, I don't think there is a location I couldn't infiltrate or a target I couldn't kill before escaping without detection."

I gave my own smile. "Good, because your next infiltration targets are Stark Industries, SHIELD, and the Bio-Tech Force Enhancement Project. Start with Stark because what I want is the scale model of the 1974 Stark Expo's grounds. It's probably collecting dust in a low-security storage warehouse somewhere, but I have no idea where, so you will need to infiltrate their systems to locate it. From SHIELD, I want as complete a copy of their databases as you can manage. Ideally, I want any investigation to point to Alexander Pierce."

"And Bio-Tech?" she asked, as I paused to take a breath.

"A copy of their research of course, but what I really want is a sample of the original Super Soldier Serum. General Ross got permission to pull one of the last remaining samples out of the vaults for his little project, and I want some of it to go missing."

Her eyes widened slightly at that. "The Captain America formula? At least you think big, Raith, but I would dearly love to know where you are getting all your information. And why some old model is being talked about in the same briefing as that or raiding SHIELD's files?"

I shrugged, "Everyone has to have some secrets, and the enemies that are coming our way in time are the kinds of enemies who could clean Earth of life without blinking. I will steal every scrap of power I can in preparation for that fight, and I'm hopeful that Maya will be able to use the Serum to advance and complement Extremis. The Stark Expo model isn't as relevant, but it will be useful in time, and so we may as well take it before anyone else realizes just how important it really is."