Damn it, I've gotten this far without even realizing it.
I've been thinking about the plot for the past two days, but I have absolutely no clue what to do.
Does anyone have any storylines they'd like to see?
After Thanos was defeated... the outline was gone...
If you have any plot points you'd like to see, please leave a comment.
I originally planned to join other American comics that have appeared on the big screen, but Lynn and Natasha accidentally entered other American comic universes.
But I'm afraid I won't be able to handle it, and I'm also afraid that people won't accept it.
If I don't have any good suggestions... I can only continue writing according to the MCU timeline until it's finished.
Back in New York, life became a little too peaceful.
Lynn was left with nothing to do; everyone had their own things to do.
He, on the other hand, spent his days eating, drinking, and sleeping.
Tony was busy upgrading his armor, Ivan was tinkering with his new reactor, Banner was quietly conducting research in the laboratory on the third basement level.
Steve continued his daily training regimen, Hawkeye calibrated his equipment in the training room, Sam and Rhodey took turns on aerial patrols, and Natasha, like a lazy cat, spent most of her time on the office sofa flipping through various documents.
More than half a year passed like this.
One late night, Lynn simply couldn't stay idle any longer.
He stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window on the top floor of the base, looking down at the brightly lit training ground.
His experience in Asgard six months ago made him realize a very real problem: he couldn't always stand in front of everyone.
That purple-skinned sweet potato will come sooner or later, and when he does, they will face not only Thanos, but also his entire army.
He needs them to be able to hold the fort as well.
The next day, he gathered everyone in a training ground deep within the base.
"Starting today, I want to help you improve your physical fitness. With your current physique, you probably wouldn't last a single round against a truly strong opponent."
"Poor?"
Colonel Rhodes raised an eyebrow. He considered himself an elite soldier, rigorously trained by the military; "I can run a full marathon with a 100-kilogram load."
"The enemy won't care how many marathons you ran."
Lynn glanced at him, "But it's alright, I have a way to help you improve."
He took out a dark gold stone from his pocket, its surface shimmering with a faint six-colored light, like a compressed star.
"This is the embers of the Eternal Flame I extracted from my body, and some other things."
Lynn placed it on the stone platform in the center of the room. " Odin once used the Eternal Flame to temper my body. However, I don't have his power; I can only borrow a portion of it. The effect won't be as strong as the Eternal Flame, and it won't grant you divine power, but it's enough to increase your physical attributes three to five times."
"Three to five times?" Tony's eyes lit up instantly. "You mean, I can dismantle tanks with my bare hands?"
"You can demolish a wall with your bare hands."
Lynn corrected him, "Let Steve handle the tanks."
Everyone burst into laughter.
The tempering process was not as peaceful as Lynn had imagined.
Once activated, six beams of light of different colors shot out from the stone, enveloping the eight people standing around the stone platform. Each beam of light carried a different attribute of power—strength, speed, stamina, perception, recovery, and willpower.
Tony was the first to call out.
"F**, you didn't tell us it would hurt this much!" He gritted his teeth, veins bulging on his forehead, his whole body trembling violently as if he had been thrown into a washing machine.
Banner's reaction was much calmer. He had fully accepted the Hulk. The anger was still there, the power was still there, but he no longer saw the Hulk as an enemy.
Captain America gritted his teeth and remained silent. His body trembled slightly, but his posture remained as straight as a pine tree.
Natasha's forehead was covered in fine beads of sweat, but she just clenched her fists tightly.
She didn't cry out, but Lynn could feel her will adapting to that force in an extremely tenacious way.
Hawkeye and Sam are in similar situations; they're both gritting their teeth and holding on.
Rhodey was the loudest.
"I feel like my cells are regenerating! Is this really safe?!"
"Safety." Lynn leaned against the wall, hands in his pockets, his tone as relaxed as if he were watching a ball game. "It'll only hurt for three days at most."
Three days?!
The tempering process lasted for a full six hours.
As the last ray of light faded, the eight men collapsed to the ground almost simultaneously. Tony lay sprawled on the floor, panting heavily, his shirt soaked with sweat. He struggled to turn over, staring at the ceiling, a smile more like a grimace tugging at his lips.
" Lynn... you bastard... next time, could you at least give me a heads-up? I need to find a way to anesthetize myself!"
Lynn did not answer. He simply walked to the stone platform and put away the runestone that had dimmed.
Gradually, everyone noticed the change.
Tony discovered he could lift a car with one hand.
Although he couldn't hold it for very long, he could definitely lift it. His reaction speed had increased nearly fourfold, and he dodged Hawkeye's arrow for the first time in a simulated training session.
Captain America's stats have almost doubled. His shield blocking speed is faster, and his punches are powerful enough to leave a shallow dent in the alloy wall of the training room.
Natasha's changes are even more subtle. Her sensory abilities have been greatly enhanced; she can hear changes in the frequency of someone's heartbeat from fifty meters away and can determine whether someone is lying by smell. Her fighting skills were already top-notch, and now, combined with her enhanced physical abilities, she can hold her own against Captain America.
Rhodey was finally able to bend a steel pipe with his bare hands without wearing armor.
Hawkeye and Sam have also improved significantly. Hawkeye's archery accuracy has reached an almost abnormal level.
Sam's flight speed and maneuverability increased several times over.
"How are you feeling?" Lynn stood at the edge of the training field, watching everyone on the field getting used to their bodies.
Tony walked over to him, flexed his wrists, and hummed with satisfaction. "That's enough."
"This is enough for now; who knows when an enemy I can't even defeat might appear?"
Natasha turned her head to look at him, said nothing, but simply reached out and gently took his hand.
Time flies.
After the tempering process, Wanda and Pietro also grew considerably. The two young people were no longer as wary and hostile as when they first arrived. Wanda's control over magic became more and more precise, and Pietro was also steadily improving.
More importantly, their eyes showed less wariness towards others.
Tony's connections got them into a private school in upstate New York. It was an ordinary high school.
When Tony discussed sending the two to school with Lynn, he said, "What they need isn't fighting skills. They need to learn how to get along with people, how to survive in the world of ordinary people."
Wanda was somewhat resistant to this, but after Lynn talked to her about it once, she finally accepted it.
"You don't need to be a weapon."
Lynn told her, "You need to become a complete person."
In recent years, although Lynn did not allow Wanda and her brother to participate in the internal affairs of the SSC, he never forbade them to learn about them. Wanda would occasionally help Natasha with some intelligence analysis work, while Pietro liked to watch Sam and Rhodey spar on the sidelines of the training ground, and would occasionally sneak in to spar with them.
Days passed by like this.
One morning, Lynn called Tony into her office.
"I'm leaving for a while." He pushed a black metal card in front of Tony. "This is a communicator. Contact me if you encounter any problems you can't solve."
Tony picked up the card, looked at it over and over, and a helpless smile appeared on his lips, "Are you going on vacation again?"
"About the same."
Lynn leaned back in her chair, her gaze calm. "I want to take Natasha to see some things in this universe."
"What is that?"
"You're so nosy."
Lynn stood up, patted Tony on the shoulder, and said, "The Earth is in your hands now. Don't blow up the lab again."
"When did I ever blow up a lab?"
Last month.
"That was an accident!"
Three days later, Lynn left Earth with Natasha.
Their first stop was Velathis, a planet located on the edge of the Andromeda constellation.
The entire planet was enveloped in a pale purple atmosphere, like a giant Crystal suspended in the void. As the spaceship passed through the atmosphere, Natasha witnessed a sight she would never forget.
The surface of Velathis is covered by an endless forest of fluorescent light. The giant trees, hundreds of meters tall, are completely transparent, with liquid light flowing inside. Whenever the wind blows, the canopy emits a deep, resonant sound, as if the entire forest is simultaneously singing an ancient ballad.
The ground was covered with soft moss. With each step, a pale blue ripple would spread outwards, like a pebble thrown into a calm pond.
"Is this what you meant by 'look at the universe'?" Natasha crouched down, reaching out to touch the glowing moss, feeling a warm sensation on her fingertips.
"This is just the first stop." Lynn stood behind her, hands in his pockets, his gaze calmly sweeping over the fluorescent forest.
They spent three days in Velathis. By day they hiked in the fluorescent forest, and by night they lay on moss, watching three different colored moons rise in the sky. There was no intelligent life on this planet, only countless luminous creatures moving through the forest.
Some floated in mid-air like jellyfish, while others snaked and crawled along tree trunks, their bodies radiating a soft glow.
The second stop is a planet completely covered by oceans, Thalassos.
The entire planet has no landmass, only an endless expanse of deep blue ocean. But the ocean is not still; enormous whirlpools slowly rotate on its surface.
Lynn led Natasha into one of the whirlpools.
Three thousand meters below the sea, they discovered a city submerged by the ocean. The buildings were constructed of a translucent coral material, emitting a faint blue glow in the darkness of the deep sea. There were no living creatures in the city, but the walls were covered with densely packed runes, recording the history of a long-vanished civilization.
Natasha floated in the water, watching the silhouettes of the buildings appear and disappear in the dim light, and a feeling of indescribable awe welled up in her heart.
"Where are the people inside? Why did they disappear?" she asked through the communication channel.
"I don't know," Lynn's voice came through the earpiece. "Maybe they went somewhere else, maybe they're just tired."
They spent an afternoon in the underwater city, then surfaced, lay on the sea, and watched the giant gas planet slowly rise in the sky. Its rings, illuminated by the star, refracted a rainbow of colors, like a Bifrost spanning the heavens.
Over the next few months, they went to many more places.
On a planet called " Xaloth ", they saw a desert made of Crystal. Each grain of sand was a tiny Crystal, refracting countless colors in the sunlight. When the wind whipped up sandstorms, the entire desert was like a giant prism, breaking down the sunlight into countless rainbows, weaving a flowing picture in the sky.
On a volcanic planet called " Ignis," they stood on the edge of a lava river, watching lava waterfalls thousands of meters high cascade down the cliffs, drawing fiery arcs across the night sky. The air temperature reached hundreds of degrees Celsius, but Lynn erected a thin energy barrier around them, keeping all the heat out.
On a frozen planet called " Aethera ", they saw a forest made of Eternity ice crystals. The ice crystals were of all shapes and sizes, some like flowers, some like birds, and some like human figures. Inside each ice crystal was some kind of ancient creature—frozen in a moment tens of thousands of years ago, their postures lifelike, as if they were just sleeping.
Wherever she went, Natasha would quietly observe, feel, and remember. She wouldn't shout excitedly like ordinary people; she would simply use her eyes to deeply etch everything into her mind.
Lynn stood beside her the whole time, hands in his pockets, his gaze calm.
He had seen too many fantastical planets and witnessed the rise and fall of too many civilizations in the Ancient One's manuscripts.
But every time he saw the light reflected in Natasha's eyes, he felt that these planets seemed even more beautiful than when he first saw them with his own eyes.
One night, Natasha leaned on his shoulder, looking at the completely unfamiliar starry sky above, "Have you ever thought that Thanos, whom you mentioned before, came, would all of this be gone?"
"Sooner or later, everything will happen. Nothing in the universe is Eternity."
"Then what are we still protecting?"
Lynn was silent for a moment. He reached out and tucked Natasha's red hair, which had been ruffled by the wind, behind her ear.
Protect this moment.
He said softly, "At this moment, you are here, and I am here. Isn't that the meaning of protection?"
Natasha didn't speak again. She simply buried her face in his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat, and closed her eyes.
The starry sky above was spinning silently.
In some corner of the universe, a tall, purple figure sat on a desolate planet, gazing at the Infinity Gauntlet newly forged by Eitri, the dwarf king of Nidavellir, lost in thought.