Yuri was woken by a call from the renovation company. They'd agreed to let them in at eight that morning, but he'd slept until nine.
"We've been waiting here for half an hour!"
"So you're saying you're half an hour late?"
The two sides looked at each other and, in perfect unison, chose to skip the question of who had actually been late.
He helped carry the ordered shelves, sofa, and coffee table into the house, then directed the burly Black men to put everything in the right places.
It really was hard for Black people to find work in America. If they were Mexican immigrants who'd crossed the border illegally, it was even harder. White people generally wouldn't touch grueling jobs that required hard labor, like moving furniture.
After happily paying the remaining balance by card, the Black men climbed into their truck and drove off with a vroom.
Yuri greeted the old man sunning himself outside the bookstore next door. The old man cheerfully asked, "Hey, young man! Have you decided what kind of business you're opening? Don't tell me you're really going to compete with an old guy like me."
"Don't worry, sir."
Yuri walked over to the old man and pointed at the shelves in the glass display window. "I'm planning to open a handicraft shop and sell little things I make myself."
The old man peered at Yuri's three-story building, rather displeased that Yuri was blocking the sunlight shining on his face. "Young man, you should go back and tidy up your place. Sunbathing is a waste of time, so leave it to an old man like me."
"Yuri."
Yuri turned and held out his hand to the old man. "It's a pleasure to be your neighbor."
"Rogers."
The old man took Yuri's hand and shook it happily twice. "You made quite a racket last night. You nearly kept this old man from sleeping."
Yuri apologized again and again. Only after he firmly promised that it wouldn't happen again did the old man finally grumble that he forgave him.
Yuri treated the gray-haired old man to breakfast at the café next door, then returned to his three-story building.
There were already more people out on the street. The honking of bicycles, motorcycles, and cars mixed with the chatter of passersby, and all the noise poured through the glass doors like a flood finding every crack.
"Soundproofing!"
"Soundproofing is a must!"
He called Mark, but a woman with a sultry voice answered. Like the old man next door, the unlucky kid hadn't slept at all last night—but the old man had been on the receiving end of the noise, while Mark had been making it...
"Did you find somewhere to sleep last night?"
Mark opened with a merciless taunt.
"I did. In your mother's bed."
After trading a few barbs, Yuri quickly got down to business. "Get me some materials. Any kind, any amount. Have them delivered to my new place tonight."
Mark took the pen the woman handed him and wrote down the address Yuri gave him on her butt. "Okay, no problem. Anything else?"
"Guns and ammo, whatever you want. I can get you rocket launchers and grenades, too. If you want, you could open an illegal gun shop!"
"NO! NO! NO!"
Yuri frantically wagged his index finger over the phone. An illegal gun shop? Like hell! He was a student at MIT, for crying out loud. He'd have to have lost his mind to become an illegal arms dealer.
After stressing that Mark shouldn't bring over any weird stuff, Yuri decisively hung up. He waved a hand and disassembled several shelves into parts, then controlled them as they fitted into suitable places in the walls.
Phastos's fortress-like house made use of the principles behind energy shields. Yuri couldn't build one of those with his current level of ability, but putting together some vibration-dampening devices was easy enough.
All creations of the Eternals were imbued with mysterious patterns, allowing them to independently absorb ambient energy and keep functioning even after they were no longer under their creator's control.
After a faint tremor, the entire first floor fell into deathly silence. Apart from Yuri's own breathing, he couldn't hear a thing.
After a few adjustments, the sound reaching his ears was at the most comfortable level. Yuri clapped his hands in satisfaction and clicked his tongue with a grin.
"NICE!"
"So, in theory, this device can resist mind control, mental interference, and the like?"
Tony picked up a palm-sized "chip" from the lab bench between his fingers. He squinted at it beneath the ceiling's shadowless light, then happily handed it to the mechanical arm Dum-E. "Jarvis, design a suitable hat for it. After tonight's press conference, I'll take it to pay that annoying Yuri a visit and see whether the cute little thing works as well as we expect."
"Right away, sir."
In less than a second, Jarvis projected a full view of more than a dozen different hat designs into the air before Tony. "Sir, I don't recommend going in person. According to probability calculations, the safest option is to send someone else to test it."
"Your advice is sound, but I'm not taking it."
Tony quickly picked a vintage-looking hat with just the right amount of flash and waved away the projection. "This one. Let's see what my junior, Yuri, can do without his superpowers..."
"Beep!"
The door lock beeped open. Obadiah walked in with a thick, black Cuban cigar tucked under his arm, his villainous-looking face full of genuine concern.
He hurried over and embraced Tony, asking anxiously, "Oh, my dear nephew. I heard you didn't sleep at all last night. Let me guess—you invented some new weapon, didn't you?"
"Haha, good morning."
Tony waved to shut down the lab bench and changed the subject with a chuckle. "Trust me, I spent all last night building up to it. Tonight's press conference is going to be a huge surprise!"
Obadiah laughed theatrically and took a hamburger from his bodyguard, the cigar still in his hand. "You've worked hard, Tony. I know you haven't eaten, so I bought you your favorite cheeseburger... Go on, try it."
Tony took it with a smile, using the opportunity to slip out of Obadiah's embrace. He opened the wrapper and took a big bite. After chewing a few times, he said indistinctly, "Uncle Obadiah, after all these years, you still don't really know me. My favorite cheeseburger comes from the food truck downstairs, not from a fast-food restaurant..."
"Oh..."
Obadiah paused. He looked at Tony's profile as Tony walked a step ahead of him, as though trying to find something new in the face he'd been looking at for more than twenty years.
"People change, Tony."
"Who knows? Maybe one day you'll suddenly start liking cheeseburgers from fast-food restaurants."
Tony turned to face Obadiah and walked backward. "That's impossible!"
"If every food truck selling cheeseburgers in the world hasn't disappeared, there's only one way that could happen."
"That's if I'm dead!"
Before you continue