Earth, the United States, New York, and Stark Industries’ underground laboratory.
It had only been a few days since Lin Rui disappeared, and Tony had been continuously researching and upgrading his armor and various other high-tech gadgets, seemingly indifferent to the outside world. After all, Tony was a genius, a billionaire, a philanthropist, but not a politician.
As a key figure initially united to establish the Earth Federation, Tony had not actively participated in the meetings to create the Earth Federation. Besides him, Phantom Knight Lin Rui had also not been involved in these matters.
Instead, Professor Charles Xavier, the leader of the X-Men representing mutants advocating for peace, frequently appeared at SHIELD headquarters, engaging in discussions with high-ranking officials from around the world alongside Captain Rogers.
Following their interactions and collaborations with Lin Rui’s League of Defenders, the X-Men had once again bee more visible to the public. Additionally, their contributions in the previous battles between SHIELD and Hydra, the Dark Elf invasion, and the appearance of Dormammu further showcased the presence of the X-Men.
With these events as a backdrop, bined with Professor Charles Xavier’s relentless efforts and advocacy, the attitudes of ordinary people towards mutants were beginning to shift on the international stage.
Of course, this shift primarily applied to the harmless mutants. For those unstable mutants who posed a threat to others, even if the general attitude changed, they would not be tolerated when causing harm to others.
pared to individuals like Rogers and Professor Charles Xavier, who had a multitude of responsibilities beyond being superheroes, Lin Rui and Tony appeared to have a relatively easy life.
However, while they didn’t have to deal with political issues, they were still top-tier geniuses and researchers. So, when they took off their superhero identities, they had a lot of work to do in their other roles.
Tony had to continuously upgrade his Iron Man suits, or perhaps they couldn’t even be called Iron Man suits anymore. With no groundbreaking advancements in nanotechnology, Tony had already pushed the capabilities of the metallic materials in his suits to their limits.
Consequently, Tony had taken a different approach, bining Extremis lifeform technology with Iron Man alloys to create an entirely new series of armor.
Besides Extremis, Tony had also started exploring Venom. This wasn’t his first attempt at incorporating Venom; he had experimented with bining Venom and the Iron Man suit several months ago.
However, that experiment didn’t yield good results due to Venom’s uncontrollable nature, causing Tony to temporarily put aside his research on Venom-based suits.
However, when Tony learned about recent events involving the San Francisco Life Foundation, he reignited his interest in studying Venom. To do so, Tony had invited the real Venom and its symbiotic host, Eddie, to Stark Industries.
Under the influence of SHIELD’s superhuman recruitment program, Eddie had wasted no time in joining SHIELD. While Venom wasn’t too thrilled, it had essentially sold out its entire clan, and not aligning with a powerful organization wasn’t a safe choice.
After all, nobody knew if SHIELD could pletely eradicate the Venom symbiote clan drifting in space. If they missed a few, it would surely spell trouble for Venom in the future.
Currently, in the underground Level 3 lifeform laboratory of Stark Industries, Eddie stood shirtless at a central observation platform. The platform beneath Eddie’s feet was smooth and appeared to be made of milky white glass, with bright lights emanating from underneath. Above Eddie’s head, faint blue lines formed various images, resembling a life scan.
After several seconds, Tony, standing by the observation platform, waved his right hand, and the faint blue lines above Eddie’s head quickly converged in front of him, forming a display of data and a test result. Tony’s eyes lit up as he examined the data on the peaceful coexistence of Venom with a human.
“Um… Mr. Stark, can I e down now? It’s quite chilly up here,” Eddie asked awkwardly, feeling ignored by Tony.
“Oh, you can e down. We’ll work on summoning Venom to form the armor later. The slower, the better,” Tony replied quickly after hearing Eddie’s request.
“Eh…”
Upon hearing the second part of Tony’s statement, Eddie’s embarrassment deepened. Nevertheless, he had no choice but to jump down from the observation platform directly. Although Eddie hadn’t been with SHIELD for long, the brief time was enough for him to understand what kind of person Tony Stark, known as the world’s greatest genius, was.
“Eddie!! Are you just going to let him manipulate us like this? What happened to our dignity? You’re making us lose face!” Venom’s voice sounded furious in Eddie’s mind as he began to put on his clothes.
Clearly, Venom was not happy about being observed and experimented on by Tony. However, Tony hadn’t done anything out of line, and this was the situation they were in.
“Are you two municating through your thoughts again?” Just as Eddie had exchanged a few words with Venom in his mind, Tony, who was reviewing the data, suddenly looked up and asked Eddie.
Eddie and Venom: “…”
To be continued…
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