Mister Destiny Hawking

"Actually, I have an ability that nobody else knows about. Since I get along so well with you, Natasha, I'll make an exception and secretly tell you."

After chatting for a while, Hawking suddenly adopted a mysterious expression.

"What ability?"

Black Widow's eyes immediately lit up. She thought that this conversation had lowered Hawking's guard.

Hawking put on a smug expression and began spinning his tale.

"Actually, it isn't an innate ability. It's an extremely profound technique I learned from a young age.

By looking at someone's palm, I can roughly determine the course of their life. Where I come from, it's commonly called fortune-telling."

"Really?"

Black Widow was skeptical. Instinctively, she found the ability a little far-fetched.

"Of course it's real. If you don't believe me, let me show you."

Hawking grabbed Black Widow's hand, removed her glove, and held it before his eyes as he pretended to examine it for a while. Then he sighed, frowned, and shook his head.

"Natasha, you have the fate of a Star of Solitude!"

"What is a Star of Solitude?"

Black Widow looked completely confused.

She might know Chinese, but that did not mean she understood all of its cultural concepts.

"The Star of Solitude means you were born with a troubled fate. Your childhood will be difficult, your future will not end well, and you'll most likely be alone for the rest of your life, with neither marriage nor children."

Hawking spoke with great conviction as he made it all up.

Of course, he did not know how to tell fortunes, nor could he predict the future. What he had loaded was Harry Potter, not Grindelwald. He did not possess some innate mystical eye that could foresee the future.

He was merely teasing Black Widow because she kept trying to pry information out of him.

Though, to be fair, some of what he said was indeed true.

Sure enough, upon hearing Hawking's words, Black Widow's body stiffened, and she fell into a somewhat melancholy state.

She had been born in the Soviet Union in 1984 and became an abandoned infant.

She was later adopted and trained by a government agency. Together with Soviet Captain Alexei, Iron Maiden Melina, and Yelena, who was also an orphan, she had posed as a family of four and gone to Ohio on a spy mission.

After the mission failed, she was sent to the Red Room, where she underwent even harsher training under Madam B.

During that time, her body had been injected with enhanced genes, and she had been forced to undergo a tubal ligation procedure, permanently losing the ability to bear children.

Over those years, as the most outstanding Black Widow, she had been sent all over the world for espionage and assassination missions. Her hands had been stained with the blood of many innocent people, even children.

Until two years ago, when S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Hawkeye Barton had been ordered to eliminate her, but instead unexpectedly made her realize how wrong her life had been. She had then decided to join S.H.I.E.L.D. and atone for her past sins.

Looking at it that way, what Hawking had said seemed... strangely accurate.

Could my entire life really be like this?

Black Widow felt desolate inside.

At sixteen or seventeen, Black Widow's mental fortitude was still weaker than it would be ten years later, after she had experienced all sorts of Hydra S.H.I.E.L.D. missions.

Hawkeye had clearly noticed that something was wrong with Black Widow. He did not believe Hawking possessed any ability to predict fate, so he held out his hand.

"If you're that good, take a look at mine too."

He wanted to use facts to make Black Widow understand that Hawking's words were merely a coincidence.

Naturally, Hawking did not refuse.

"Oh, yours is pretty good. You actually have the fate of many children and grandchildren."

Glancing at Hawkeye's outstretched palm, he resumed his nonsense.

"From your palm, I can see that your childhood seems to have been difficult too. It should be related to your family. But your future will be quite good. You'll marry one of your colleagues and have at least three children."

Barton, who had just raised a glass of water to take a sip while watching Hawking perform, froze as well.

His childhood had indeed been difficult. During a robbery at a convenience store with his mother, he had shot and killed the robber, which resulted in his mother going to prison.

And now, at thirty, he was dating a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Mockingbird and planned to marry her within the next two years.

Could this mutant kid named Hawking really have the ability to see through fate? Then I really will have three children!

At that moment, he hoped Hawking's ability was fake, because that would mean his good friend Natasha would have a happy future as well. Yet he also hoped it was real, because that would mean his own future would be very happy.

"All right—huh? Natasha, Barton, what's wrong with you two?"

At that moment, Hill suddenly pushed open the lounge door. But when she saw the expressions on Black Widow and Hawkeye's faces, confusion appeared on her own.

Why did two of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top agents look like one had suffered a great loss while the other was tangled in indecision?

"Oh, are they done talking? Then we can leave.

Natasha, Barton, it was nice chatting with you. Let's talk again if we get the chance."

Hawking immediately stood, waved to Black Widow and Hawkeye, then left the lounge with Mystique and Hill.

"Um... can you really see people's fates?"

On the way to the Director's Office, Mystique quietly asked Hawking.

Although she had closed her eyes and pretended to nap, she had not missed a single word of the conversation among the three people in the lounge.

There was a black-market mutant merchant named Caliban who could occasionally see fragments of the future, so it did not seem entirely impossible that Hawking could see through people's fates.

"What do you think?"

Hawking gave her a meaningful smile.

If you believed he could see through fate, then you would naturally take his future words to heart. If the future changed and his words turned out to be wrong, he had never admitted that he could truly see through fate. That had merely been your own wishful thinking.

Mystique quickly reached out and pinched Hawking's cheek.

"You little rascal. I think I should give you the nickname Destiny Kid."

"Wrong. It's Mister Destiny!"

Hawking shrugged.

Mystique looked to be around twenty or thirty on the outside, but she was actually about the same age as Professor X and Magneto. She was old enough to be a grandmother, so he did not mind letting her pinch his cheek.

As they chatted, the two quickly returned to the office door, where they found Nick Fury and the other two seeming to have had a productive conversation.

"I hope we can cooperate more often in the future."

A rare smile appeared on Nick Fury's face.

Professor X had been more reasonable than he expected. As long as the bottom line of mutant safety was not touched, many things were easy to discuss.

Magneto was rather extreme and hostile toward humans, but Nick Fury had managed to get a handle on him.

For the moment, the result of their talks was acceptable to all three sides.

"Professor, I'm hungry. It should be time for lunch now, right?"

Hawking stepped forward. Though he was speaking to Professor X, he looked up at Nick Fury.

Nick Fury was no fool and immediately said, "Since it's lunchtime, why don't we have a meal together? I happen to know a top French restaurant that just opened."

Since the discussions had gone smoothly, sharing a meal to strengthen their relationship was not a bad idea.

Hearing that, Hawking's lips immediately curled upward. He had done it on purpose.

In about another hour, the purified water inside Stryker's body would turn into poison. If they were with Nick Fury then, they could conveniently clear themselves of all suspicion.