"Be mayor?"
Norman froze.
He truly had not expected Bant to ask something like that.
But after thinking it over carefully, he found himself genuinely tempted.
On one hand, he had built Oscorp from nothing and brought it to its current height. Pushing it any further on the business side had already become very difficult.
He was already a man who had once stood at the summit of the corporate world. Now that he was rebuilding, with Bant and Plamos backing him, things were going far more smoothly than he had imagined.
But politics?
That was something he had never experienced before.
Originally, Bant had even thought about trying to become Earth's supreme ruler just for the experience.
But later, he decided that would be far too troublesome.
Then he changed his mind. If becoming the ruler of Earth was too much of a hassle, becoming mayor of New York was perfectly doable instead. He personally had no interest in it, but he knew Norman Osborn definitely would.
In Marvel comics, quite a few people had served as mayor of New York.
For example, Kingpin and Daredevil...
If those two could become mayor, then Norman Osborn naturally could too. Not just mayor. He could even become president!
And as it happened, both Oscorp and Plamos Technology could support his rise.
Norman Osborn had already made so many sacrifices for Plamos that, based on that alone, Bant had long since started treating him as one of his own.
Besides, it would bring major benefits to the future development of both companies.
Still, the two of them did not say much more about it.
One glance was enough for them to understand each other's meaning.
By now, the battle outside had already ended.
The moment Natasha activated the signal-jamming device, everything had already been settled.
As for Ivan Vanko, if Tony could not handle him, then that would be the real joke.
Because of that, Bant did not even stay until the end. He left the Expo early with Mary Jane and Felicia and went to watch a movie instead.
By the time they walked out of the theater, the farce of the Expo attack had completely come to an end. Justin Hammer was in prison, and the evidence against him was ironclad. There was absolutely no room left for a comeback.
Tony had called Bant once, but Eunice intercepted it.
Left with no other choice, he could only leave a message.
Judging by his tone, he was very annoyed that Bant had refused the call, but overall, Tony was still in a pretty good mood. He also said he had already spoken things through with Pepper and would help Plamos acquire Hammer Technology.
But none of that needed Bant's attention.
Norman personally took over all of it.
In Bant's eyes, the old fox seemed to enjoy this kind of power struggle quite a bit.
But while Bant himself remained so calm, the impact of this attack was enormous.
Never mind the ordinary companies in the outside world.
The American military had made a complete laughingstock of itself.
They had poured massive amounts of funding into a weapons giant like Hammer Industries to build combat suits. At the time, that guy had sworn there would be absolutely no problem.
And what was the result?
Hammer Industries had no real armored suit technology at all. Ivan Vanko's arrest was enough to prove that all those robots from Hammer Industries had been nothing but empty shells.
At the end of the day, they were still only functioning because of arc reactor energy.
And even then, once they got moving, they were just oversized piles of trash.
One side rejoiced while the other suffered. The military had taken a beating, but S.H.I.E.L.D. was delighted.
The moment Nick Fury heard that the military budget was about to be cut, he seemed to recover part of his spirit. It was almost like the psychological trauma he had suffered after returning from Plamos had been cured, and he was cheerful all over again.
"To be fair, the military didn't come away with absolutely nothing. At least they recovered a few hundred tons of scrap iron. I heard from the Captain that those machines weren't even as good as tanks?"
With life suddenly feeling beautiful again, Nick Fury sat on the Helicarrier playing a tank battle game while casually making that remark.
At that point, Natasha added, "All that scrap metal was bought back by Plamos at market price."
"That high?" Nick was startled.
Then Natasha added, "The scrap value of decommissioned World War II tanks."
"Then it's fine."
Nick leaned back in relief, so happy he looked like he might break into rap at any second.
Still, honestly speaking, the only thing the military truly gained from this incident was probably a single Mark III suit.
But that thing could almost be said to have been left behind by Tony specifically for Rhodey.
Rather than saying it was given to the military, it would be more accurate to say it was given to Rhodey.
As long as War Machine remained with Rhodey, the military would not be able to do much to him. Of course, it was inevitable that they would try to study the suit's technology anyway.
Fortunately, Tony developed armor faster than Apple released new phones. By the time the military spent more than ten years fully understanding the Mark III, he would already have created nano-armor and maybe even a time machine, so he would not care about that bit of copyright anymore.
That alone showed how flawed the military's development model was.
When it came to budget, the military had far more funding than S.H.I.E.L.D. ever did.
But among all those soldiers, there were barely any who could actually do research. Most of the money still had to be thrown at outside companies, and every one of those companies was less reliable than the last.
There was no need to mention Hammer Industries.
Even the old Oscorp had progressed very slowly in its human enhancement research. They had finally managed to create a lizard serum, only for it to come with side effects severe enough to nearly drag all of New York back into prehistoric times.
"In the twenty-first century, talent is what matters most."
Nick Fury sighed with emotion, feeling more and more certain that his Avengers Initiative had been the right call.
The only regret was that, so far, the Avengers roster was still painfully small.
At present, the candidates were Bant, Tony, and the two Spider-Men.
Even now, Nick Fury still did not know Spider-Man's real identity.
Tony knew Peter's identity because after encountering Quicksilver, he had become overly sensitive to anything involving the dinosaur people.
Back then, he had discovered that Spider-Man had appeared on the Williamsburg Bridge, so he had casually looked into who he was.
After that, especially once Bant developed Eunice using JARVIS's core code, Peter's identity had been locked down under extremely strict protection.
"That kid's pretty good."
As soon as Nick brought up Spider-Man, Captain America immediately thought of the young man he had met at the Expo.
"He's incredible. In every category, his abilities are stronger than mine. More importantly, he respects his elders."
That last part was only a joke, but it also showed how much Captain America approved of Spider-Man.
He said, "I even suspect he could lift Mjolnir too."
"Seriously?" Nick raised a brow.
"If even he can lift it, then who's left that can't?"
No one answered.
But at the exact same moment, everyone in the room came up with the same answer in their minds.
After a few seconds of silence, Coulson asked,
"Speaking of Thor..."
"I wasn't talking about Thor."
Nick joked, "Coulson, you're finished. That was disrespectful to a god."
"I don't think tossing him onto a construction site and making him carry cement counts as respect for a god either, sir," Coulson said helplessly.
That was right.
After Thor stayed on Earth, he did not end up living the nice S.H.I.E.L.D. lifestyle of full room and board.
In order to save money, Nick absolutely refused to let a guy who clearly ate a lot and liked smashing plates join S.H.I.E.L.D. just to freeload.
So, under the excuse that it was a divine trial, Nick Fury made a sharp turn and tossed Thor onto a construction site to work for a living.
"He's strong as an ox. He can earn in one day what others earn in three. Isn't that a natural-born king of brick hauling? Besides, that's already pretty good. When I was young, I picked cotton and didn't get paid at all," Nick said.
In response, every single person there rolled their eyes at him.
Then Nick brought up Tony again.
"That kid's fine, right?"
Ever since Ivan Vanko had been arrested, and partly because he wanted to build goodwill, Nick had told Tony about Howard's past, including the history of Howard and Ivan Vanko's father developing the reactor together.
In a certain sense, Vanko calling Tony a thief was not entirely wrong.
Natasha shrugged.
"He doesn't care. He told Vanko, 'Only idiots stay stuck on achievements from the past. You're still obsessed with this, while someone else has already discovered a brand-new element and completely changed the equations behind the reactor.'"
"Looks like this whole thing hit him less hard than Bant Parker's new element," Nick said.
Then a regretful look appeared on his face.
"Tell me, why won't he work with us?"
A moment later, it was like he had suddenly remembered something. He shot to his feet and pinched his chin.
"Wait. Bant Parker... Parker?"
Half a month later.
Bant sat with one leg crossed over the other in the top floor office of what had once been the Hammer Industries building and was now the Plamos Technology headquarters, looking down at the small houses scattered across Queens.
The feeling of standing at the top was incredibly strange.
It was as if everything lay under his control.
As if he were the ruler of this world!
"Sir, aside from this building, a total of ninety Iron Soldiers have also been recovered," Eunice reported.
Because Bant had tampered with those machines, every side involved had been led to believe that the robots Hammer produced were all more or less useless scrap metal.
So when they heard that Plamos was actually willing to spend money buying them back, the military was overjoyed.
Without the slightest hesitation, they packaged up all the wreckage and sent it straight to Bant, as if they were afraid he might change his mind.
But in truth, no matter how unimpressive Hammer's Iron Soldiers were, they were not so bad that they were literally worse than old tanks and planes.
It was just that Bant had tampered with them and limited the rotational speed of the reactor cores inside those machines.
Aside from those, the several hundred production lines that had originally belonged to Hammer Industries also now belonged to Plamos.
Connors was delighted as well.
Because starting today, he no longer needed to squeeze into a tiny room and stare at the few little reptiles crawling around in glass enclosures.
Bant had specifically cleared out two whole floors for him to raise mutated animals and conduct research.
That kind of treatment was something Connors never would have dared imagine back when he was at Oscorp.
But seeing how thrilled Connors looked over something so minor, Bant could not help rolling his eyes.
This was only the beginning.
In the future, he planned to buy a few islands, then build his own Jurassic Park.
"Though now that I think about it, doesn't Marvel already have dinosaurs in the setting?" Bant was not entirely sure.
The one thing he could be certain about was the school reopening date.
After everything that had happened, school was finally about to start again.
/-\
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