After officially reaching A-Class status, Jessica Campbell imdiately dragged her friends out to celebrate.
Wanda watched her with unconcealed envy.
So people really did seem born under a different sky. Jessica had talent, instinct, and absurd growth potential without needing to grind herself into dust for every inch of progress.
Wanda wanted that kind of life too.
Instead, she was still buried under endless managent courses and advanced studies, suffering through textbooks thick enough to stop bullets.
Emma, anwhile, couldn't have cared less about Jessica's promotion.
Out of everyone around Drex Valen, she was the closest to uncovering his secrets.
Thanks to her telepathic abilities, Emma had rapidly beco one of the most popular girls on campus.
Everyone who talked to her felt an imdiate sense of familiarity, like reconnecting with an old friend they hadn't seen in years. She always seed to understand exactly what to say, exactly how to respond, exactly what soone wanted to hear.
Even the tiny things people never shared aloud.
Hidden insecurities.
Private hobbies.
Embarrassing thoughts.
Emma saw all of it effortlessly.
Jessica and Wanda were no exception.
Their minds were practically defenseless in front of her. Emma could skim their thoughts casually without either of them noticing.
Jessica's initial caution and distance.
Wanda's genuine warmth and openness.
To Emma, it was intoxicatingly easy.
For the first ti in her life, she was enjoying sothing close to normalcy.
Her circle of friends kept growing. Teachers adored her. Classmates admired her. Her grades climbed higher and higher, helped generously by telepathic "assistance" during exams.
Piece by piece, Emma constructed the image of the perfect student.
Beautiful.
Elegant.
Academically flawless.
Untouchable.
Drex had warned her before about abusing telepathy.
Using it recklessly could lead to consequences she wouldn't anticipate.
Even he rarely used mind-reading casually unless absolutely necessary.
Emma had obediently agreed to his face.
Behind his back, she ignored the warning completely.
As far as she knew, there was no way for Drex to detect when she used her abilities.
And the only telepath vastly stronger than her, Esdeath, was almost never around anyway.
What Emma didn't know was that Drex was already preparing sothing else entirely.
A true telepathic master.
Soone capable of monitoring the psychic activity across the United States itself.
Combined with the Black Queen, that person would beco one of World Serpent's greatest surveillance tools.
Its all-seeing eyes.
Its all-hearing ears.
"By the way, Emma," Wanda asked suddenly, "isn't your family in Boston? Aren't you going back to check on them?"
A Dragon-level disaster had just rampaged through the city.
Emma's smile faded slightly.
"They evacuated early," she said. "They're safe."
As one of World Serpent's core mbers, her family had naturally been moved out long before things escalated.
Silver Fox Kara and the others were completely unhard.
Not that Emma particularly cared about her parents.
Her father had been violent for most of her childhood.
Her mother drifted between alcohol, drugs, and affairs.
There had never been warmth in that house.
Only Kara mattered to her.
"That's good," Wanda said, relieved.
She didn't think any further about it.
S.H.I.E.L.D. had been under enormous pressure lately.
Especially Nick Fury.
The endless ergence of monsters was making the organization look increasingly powerless. For all their talk about protecting world security and maintaining global stability, they were constantly one step behind.
They couldn't detect monsters fast enough.
The Superhero Association could.
They couldn't evacuate civilians efficiently.
The Superhero Association could.
They couldn't eliminate threats quickly enough to minimize damage.
The Superhero Association could.
Boston alone had suffered hundreds of millions in direct losses and over a billion in indirect economic damage during the Asura Kabuto incident.
And yet the public considered that outco acceptable.
Because everyone had seen the footage.
If Asura Kabuto hadn't been stopped, the destruction of Boston would only have been a matter of ti.
Probably less than a day.
And once the disaster spread beyond the city, the consequences could have escalated catastrophically. Dragon-level threats were officially classified as crises capable of annihilating multiple cities.
The Superhero Association had neutralized the threat with astonishing speed.
Compared to what could have happened, even the devastation caused by the clash between Asura Kabuto and the Hulk was considered manageable.
As a result, governnts around the world were beginning to reevaluate superheroes entirely.
They had already tested conventional military responses against monsters.
The results were humiliating.
Standard weapons barely worked.
Heavy military hardware wasn't practical inside populated cities.
That reality made Drex's strategy brutally effective.
Very few creatures could survive sustained naval bombardnt or waves of missile strikes from fighter squadrons. But by keeping battlefields centered in urban zones and evacuating civilians beforehand, the conflict transford into sothing else entirely.
A stage.
A stage where superheroes battled monsters under the gaze of countless Sentinel drone caras broadcasting every angle live across the world.
The image presented to the public was crystal clear:
Governnts failed.
Superheroes saved people.
Drex was even planning to elevate several especially attractive heroes into carefully crafted public icons. n and won with the right charisma, appearance, and dia appeal to beco the faces of the organization.
anwhile, S.H.I.E.L.D. looked increasingly obsolete.
Their funding had already been slashed multiple tis.
Nick Fury had nearly started screaming matches with the Security Council over it, but it changed nothing.
Even Alexander Pierce had recognized the truth.
Compared to old projects like the Super Soldier Program or the Winter Soldier initiative, superheroes represented a far greater investnt opportunity.
The Hulk.
Ben Grimm.
Tony Stark.
Drex Valen.
The Fantastic Four.
Every one of them possessed enough firepower to dismantle a fully ard military division alone.
And all of that power was effectively under Drex's control.
HYDRA wanted it badly.
They had already sent nurous operatives to infiltrate the Superhero Association.
Unfortunately for them, Emma and the Black Queen existed.
Those infiltrators all ended up absorbed into World Serpent instead.
Officially, they still appeared to be loyal HYDRA agents.
In reality, they fed HYDRA false intelligence while quietly helping World Serpent track down and consu more of the organization from within.
Alexander Pierce still hadn't realized how much of HYDRA had already vanished beneath Drex's shadow.
He remained lost in fantasies about eventually controlling superhero power for himself.
And HYDRA wasn't alone.
Governnts worldwide had started competing for superhero resources.
The weapons industry took another devastating hit because of it.
Drex, however, was thriving.
He had already pivoted his empire toward superhero-related technology and equipnt.
None of it was for sale.
Every day, investors and corporate giants arrived waving blank checks and offering mountains of money, only to be rejected outright.
There were no anti-monopoly laws stopping him.
Drex had no intention of allowing outside interests to interfere in what he was building.
He intended to monopolize superheroes completely.
Publicly, though, the narrative sounded far nobler.
Drex Valen was portrayed as the man standing between superheroes and exploitation by governnts or corporations.
Most heroes weren't particularly educated, and very few held favorable opinions about Arican billionaires or federal agencies to begin with.
In their eyes, Drex was the one protecting them from becoming tools.
And that loyalty only made his influence grow faster.
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