[Edward POV]
"Do you think she'll be fine after this?" Maggie asked with concern after Emma was dragged down from the stage.
"She will. She had a flawless persona before—this will actually humanize her," I replied with a chuckle.
Although, my fans might attack her for it.
I didn't have time to get entangled in celebrity drama right now, but the media wasn't going to let me off that easily.
'I can be anyone's girlfriend.'
The media latched onto Emma's words, guessing I was either mocking her or had rejected her before the speech.
It gave Emma a way out too. If she said I was just making fun of her, it would look like harmless banter that spiraled because of an alcohol-laden mistake.
If she didn't, she would've stained her own name—since I was still a young boy and she had tried to make a move on me. Unless it was two months later when I finally turned eighteen, I doubted she'd risk the latter.
"That's really crazy," Emilia Clarke said as I walked over to chat with her. Out of everyone at the party—even the royal family member—I found her the most interesting person there.
I invited her to come watch a football game with me later in November. She said yes.
We started packing up since we were heading back to LA tonight. I didn't want to linger here any longer. I had the Black Widow movie and the Daredevil TV series waiting—so much to do, so little time.
I decided to direct the Black Widow movie myself because the director I found didn't feel confident in creating an action packed movie.
Chloe Zang was still helping me with the characters, and I gave her a chance to direct a Netflix action movie for her to learn the go-to in action filmmaking.
She was the one who dropped out. I didn't take the movie away from her.
Less than two hours after leaving the party, we were already on the plane. My grandparents returned to Wisconsin, and the rest of us flew back to LA.
"My baby!" I shouted as soon as I got home, scooping Vader into my arms. I rubbed my cheek against her face. She purred softly, clearly missing me.
"Don't be too hard on her. She's pregnant, you know?" Max, the cat-sitter I'd brought in from New York, cackled from the couch. Her fingers were orange from Cheetos, wrappers piled in her lap as she watched Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
"By the way, Edward, Kendall Jenner wants to meet you," she said.
I ignored Max and asked Oracle, "How long till Vader pops?"
"Eleven days. She's due on Halloween," Oracle replied.
"Hey!" Max shouted. "Are you ignoring Kendall because you're a Knight now, and she's white trash?"
I finally turned to her. "You're calling yourself Kendall now?"
Max almost laughed but stopped herself. "I wish. Then I wouldn't have to work my ass off baking cupcakes all day. I'd just need to be trash on TV and get paid for it."
"By the way, did you come back alone?" she asked, finally standing up. The wrappers spilled to the floor.
I stared in disbelief. "Did you ransack my whole place for snacks?"
"Hey! You told me to help myself to whatever's in your kitchen. So I did."
At that moment, a small rectangular cleaning robot with an emoticon face zipped into the living room. It beeped furiously as it vacuumed up Max's mess, its screen flashing a glaring ">:(".
Then it spun around, wagging its little claws at Max like a scolding finger, before rolling away.
"That robot's got an attitude," Max muttered, pointing at it.
"Don't bother T-bot. Are you staying till Halloween, or going back to New York?" I asked.
She sighed. "I wish I could stay, but Caroline's already bitching about how much she misses me. So I have to go back."
"Make sure to come here again on Halloween," I told her.
Max groaned. "Did you advance-travel just so you could guilt-trip me like this?"
I grinned. "Yup. Exactly that."
It only took an hour to fly from LA to New York with my new ship, so she had no excuse not to come anymore.
"Ah, I grabbed a drink with your ex-girlfriend. You might want to call her," Max said casually while packing her stuff into a black trash bag. She even tried to nab T-bot, but he zipped away and ducked behind my leg, his screen flashing "!!!"
"Really? Okay," I replied.
"And when are you going to sell that robot to the market? Business is good, but cleaning is a pain. I want that one in my place." She pointed at T-bot, who peeked from behind me and flashed a smug ":P".
"I'll send you a custom one later. I'll probably release it to the market after Halloween. It's pricey, so I doubt we'll sell a lot."
It was like a self-cleaning Roomba, but this one had advanced AI—it could clean the couch, the carpet, the tightest corners, load the dishwasher, pick up dirty laundry, and even iron clothes. Basically, an in-house maid for anyone too lazy to clean.
I'd come up with the idea by referencing Herbie from the Fantastic Four comics.
The only problem: it was expensive. Each unit would cost $15,000, with $500 annually for maintenance and spare parts.
"I'm making phones and robots… I feel like that evil corporation in Mitchells vs. the Machines," I muttered, patting T-bot on the head. He beeped happily and flashed a ":D".
"Hmm… let's build up momentum first," I said, pulling out my phone. I recorded a few clips of T-bot zipping around the house doing chores, then edited them into a fake movie trailer.
After posting it on Instagram with the caption 'Would you want this in your house?', more than thirty million people voted in the poll within two hours.
I went to shower, and by the time I came back, my phone was blowing up with notifications.
The majority of the people in the world wanted the robot. Over 29 million voted Yes.
"I guess I should start up the production now." I muttered and sent the orders to my workers. We would start with 5 million units, and increase production if there was a large demand for it.
…
A few days had passed since the Knighthood ceremony. There was still a week left until Halloween.
Inside the canvas studio, Scarlett Johansson, Alan Ritchson, and Jeremy Renner were playing around with the special effects while I was testing out their coordination.
Alan Ritchson was handpicked by me to become Taskmaster in the current MCU timeline.
Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye would cameo in the movie, though he didn't have any major plotlines.
Since this movie would finally show Budapest—the mission that had been teased since the first Avengers movie—there were already fans buzzing with excitement when the announcement to start filming dropped.
The costumes in this film were taken up a notch. They looked gritty, realistic, and battle-tested.
Natasha herself would receive an upgrade: an energy rifle in the third act, which she would use to mow down mercenaries armed with stolen Chitauri weapons.
The actors needed time to prepare for their roles. Alan Ritchson was reading through dozens of comic arcs featuring Taskmaster, trying to capture the essence of the character.
After pre-production wrapped up for the day, Scarlett came to me in her Black Widow outfit with glowing red neon accents—a design that reminded me of the one I had seen in the Marvel Rivals game from a memory I carried.
Even her hair was styled the same as the game's version of Natasha.
"Hey, I heard a rumor that your script got rejected?" Scarlett asked, concern flickering in her eyes. "Was it the script for this movie?"
I looked at her with disbelief. "How did you even know about that?"
"So it's true?" she sighed.
"Well… in a sort of way. It's not the script for this movie though. That one was already greenlit by Feige and Disney. They said, and I quote: 'It was enough for the script to be made by Edward Newgate.' The other script—the one I have no idea how people caught wind of—was a fantasy epic."
"Ohh…" Scarlett's interest sharpened. "Who did you pitch it to? And who rejected it?"
I sighed. "Honestly, I wrote it to have fun with my girlfriend at the time. We were going to play it out in the Canva studio together. But then we broke up."
Scarlett's eyes widened. "You still gave her the script after you guys broke up?"
"Kinda. I wrote the screenplay for her. She told me I should do it with a new actress. But if she didn't want to, then I didn't want to either."
That was why Vanessa had asked me to call her after I got back from London.
My studio—Universal Entertainment, the merger of Universal Pictures and Entertain Studio—didn't really have a defining franchise of our own.
We had Fast and Furious, sure, but somewhere along the way it had stopped being about cars.
There were also early talks about launching a "Dark Universe" with mummies and other monsters, but I scrapped that idea before it could sink resources.
Disney had the MCU. Fox had the X-Men. WB had DC. HBO had Game of Thrones. Paramount had Transformers. Sony had Spider-Man.
I needed something to headline my studio for the next decade. That's when I created something new.
But the more I worked on it, the more I realized—it didn't have to be a big idea.
I could start small, and then it could evolve into something bigger through the years.
A shared universe where urban life mixed with psychic powers. A modern esper saga, where powers didn't come from gods or alien tech but from human genes and experiments.
With Canva Studio, I had eliminated the VFX problem, so the studio could experiment with several genres all at once.
The first movie would be about espers.
The second movie would be about being spirited away into a fantasy world—something that was popular in the female-main-character manhwa setting.
The third movie was about superheroes. The franchises could start out slow, and then we could expand later on after seeing the audience's reactions.
Still, it wasn't an urgent concern since we still had a lot of original scripts in production right now.
Suddenly, Annie Addison, my personal assistant—whom I had hired after going through a painstaking process—rushed toward me with a tablet in her hand.
"DEFCON 1! DEFCON 1!" she shouted as she interjected the conversation rudely, body-slamming Scarlett slightly out of the way. Scarlett widened her eyes, looking at Annie in disbelief.
"Defcon 1?" I was slightly alarmed. "Potentially catastrophic event?"
"Wait. Edward, did you get cancelled?" Scarlett listened in and also tried to peek at the tablet screen.
I checked the footage with Scarlett and Annie. It was a clip from The Graham Norton Show—a British comedy talk show.
Emma Watson was among the guests, and Graham asked her about the incident.
{ "So when you said, 'I can be anyone's girlfriend,' does that come out after you get rejected by him, or…?"
Emma looked exasperated and flustered as she was given the question, acting as if she hadn't come there to talk about that in the first place.
Her co-star, Daniel Radcliffe, tried to intervene, saying, "I'm pretty sure she doesn't even remember she said that."
He looked at her nervously, begging inwardly for her not to create any trouble.
However, Emma finally spoke. "I did remember it a little bit. I told that bastard Newgate I like him. He said he hates me."
The crowd gasped. Graham chuckled slightly and leaned forward, interested in the conversation. "He said that to your face?"
"Yeah. He kinda did," Emma added. "I was so depressed that I started drinking, I forgot I was going to give the speech that night."
"And then you cursed in front of the Royal Family," Graham joked, which made the studio audience laugh. }
"Is that it? That doesn't seem too bad." I said as I looked up at Annie.
Annie sighed and said, "It's not finished yet."
{ Graham asked teasingly, "So, why does he hate you so much? Do you have any idea?"
"I don't know. I guess he just doesn't like women," Emma replied crassly. Everyone laughed, but Daniel awkwardly lowered his head in disappointment. }
"Hooo—hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," Scarlett commented, looking at me playfully. "She's not thinking rationally at all."
The talk show wasn't done yet. Graham asked Emma how I acted behind the scenes, and she embellished some of the stories to paint me in a bad light.
"It's fine. This is fine," I replied casually, giving the tablet back to Annie.
Annie was shocked. "What? Are you not going to do anything? Not even sue her for defamation?"
"No." I chuckled slightly. "If anything, Emma made it seem like she was homophobic, so it's DEFCON 1 for her, not me. And since she admitted to being rejected at the start, no one is really going to believe her stories now."
"Why?" Scarlett asked, curious.
I replied, "If she had said something before she got rejected, then it might be taken seriously. But afterward, most people will realize why she was doing this."
"What if she did something worse?" Annie asked, greatly worried.
I shrugged and said, "Then we'll see each other in court, I guess. Hopefully, it won't come to that."
…
While Emma's clip was spiraling out of control, I went to the Dunphys' house to see their Halloween preparations.
As Claire and Phil were hanging cobwebs, Alex walked to the living room with her phone, reading out loud the tweets from Emma.
"He once said I wasn't 'serious enough' for acting. That hurt a little. Guess he was right, though—I'm just Hermione forever." Alex looked at me with disdain and asked, "Did you belittle her while you were filming?"
"Wow, she's continuing this on Twitter, huh? I said she sucks at the role she's playing in. She's twisting it to make it sound like I was belittling her entire career." I looked at Alex with amazement washed over my face.
"Are you not worried? Not worried at all about the backlash?" Alex asked, concerned on my behalf.
I smirked and said, "No. Not at all. Because I know a lot of people will have my back."
I wasn't just bragging. Taylor, Selena, Vanessa, Scarlett, Emma Stone, and a lot more actresses replied to Emma's tweet, carefully advising her against being petty after being rejected.
They couldn't outright scold Emma online, so they were being subtle about it.
Emma finally shut up after a while, and then she gave her PR-approved apology later on—I guess it was something her agency made her do.
I didn't even react to the entire situation, which made tabloids come out with articles speculating that I didn't even care about Emma's words.
Like I said, she was being attacked from every side because of her antics. My fans were outraged by her remarks, and some even wanted to sue her for defamation on my behalf.
"Anyway, what are you guys doing for Halloween this year?" I asked the family instead of focusing on the issue.
Before Claire could answer, my phone rang. It was Harvey.
Claire inhaled slightly and said, "You better answer that first."
"Okay then," I replied and then walked away from the living room to pick up the call.
"Edward. Something troublesome came up," Harvey said instantly after I greeted her.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"It's Miss Watson. Her agency contacted our company and asked if it was possible for you guys to get together and bury the hatchet… in public."
"I guess they want us to be seen together to mitigate the PR disaster Emma just caused, huh?" I pinched the bridge of my nose in frustration.
"If we don't do it, it's fine for us. She's the one who's on the verge of getting canceled. Even her contract with Disney for the Beauty and the Beast movie is getting impacted. She might lose the role."
I sighed and said, "Is this what she wants, or what her agents want? I could help her, but I'm not going to if she keeps being like this."
Harvey chuckled and said, "I guess it's not your responsibility. I'll send the message along and ask her to issue a retraction for the things that she said. I'll call you when it's done."
"Thanks, Harvey."
Harvey didn't waste time and began to go to work. I returned to Claire and Phil, who excitedly announced their Halloween theme this year.
"It's going to be scary, it's going to be bigger than last year." Claire flailed her arm around.
Phil added with a grin, "And last year, we had a grown man fainting at the sight of Claire's costume—"
Alex interjected, "Didn't that man try to sue you guys?"
"He had no case. Moving on." Claire added abruptly. "This year's Halloween, we're going to decorate the house as a mental asylum—"
The doorbell suddenly rang, interrupting Claire's announcement.
"Is that Luke?" Phil said before gleefully walking to open the door. However, what greeted him was his neighbor.
"Oh, hi Mark." Phil greeted the tall, fat man.
I chuckled, and Alex narrowed her eyes at me with disbelief. "Really? That level of joke sets you off?"
"Phil. I'm sorry to do this. But here." He gave a paper to Phil and Claire with a reluctant face.
"What's this? A petition?" Claire snatched it from Phil and began reading it with irritation. "TO KEEP THE HALLOWEEN DECORATION FAMILY FRIENDLY!?" she roared.
"The petition was created because of the incident that occurred last year—" Phil added on.
Both of them were pretty ticked off by the petition, and the neighbor left the house in a hurry after saying, "Sorry, you guys. It's unanimous. We're banning you from doing this over-the-top Halloween horror freak show this year."
"Hey! You're only doing this because we WON EVERY SINGLE YEAR!" Claire shouted out the door.
Both of them turned back towards Alex and me, looking speechless.
"Wow… So… what's the plan this year?" I asked, which was met with an eye roll from Claire.
I turned to Alex and asked, "By the way. Why are you here again? Should I come with you to your college and help you make friends?"
"I don't have any classes today!" Alex scoffed in annoyance.