Date: October 22, 2011 (Early Morning)
Location: The Basement, Queens
The basement was dark, smelly and needed a ventilation.
Lloyd Nipple locked the heavy steel door behind him, engaging the deadbolt and then reinforcing it with a Colloportus for good measure. He slumped against the metal, sliding down until he hit the floor. His trench coat felt heavy, weighed down by the illicit salvage of the night.
"We are alive," Lloyd announced to the room. "And we are back."
Gibraltar, the Asgardian Gargoyle, ignored him.The creature waddled over to his designated corner, a pile of old bricks and rubber and promptly vomited up a mangled, saliva-covered Hammer Drone hand. He looked at it with pride, then curled up around it like a dragon guarding a hoard.
"Disgusting," Lloyd noted fondly. "But efficient."
He stood up and moved to the desk. He carefully reached into his inner pocket. The heat radiating from the stolen core was palpable through the fabric.
He placed the object on the scarred wooden surface.
It was a cylinder of glass and metal, glowing with a malevolent, electric blue light. The "Arc Reactor" or at least, the cheap copy of what stark had built.
"Subject 42," Lloyd called out. "Front and center."
The Niffler emerged from the other pocket. He looked ragged, his fur was singed, he was covered in soot, and he was vibrating with a caffeine-like jitters.
He saw the glowing core on the table.
He froze, his beady eyes widened until they were almost all pupil. He let out a low, mournful squeak of pure desire.
"Do not touch it yet," Lloyd warned, holding up a finger. "This is not a gold coin, we have stuff to do with this."
Lloyd pulled his chair closer. He didn't have his wand, so he had to rely on his potions kit. He uncorked a vial of Revealing Solution...mostly vinegar and moonstone dust and poured a drop onto the metal casing of the core.
Hiss....
The liquid turned a sickly green.
"Palladium," Lloyd whispered. "And.....heavily irradiated, It's leaking poison."
He leaned back, staring at the blue light.
The man he had seen on the screens, Tony Stark had one of these embedded in his chest.
"The Man of Iron is either a god or a lunatic," Lloyd mused. "He keeps a star in his ribcage that is slowly killing him. It is a very dark form of Blood Magic....power at the cost of life."
Lloyd respected that, it was very Slytherin.
He looked at the Niffler. Subject 42 was now standing on his hind legs, reaching out with grabby hands, making "gimme" motions.
"You want it?" Lloyd asked.
The Niffler nodded so hard he almost fell over.
"System," Lloyd queried softly. "Compatibility check."
The blue window shimmered into existence above the glowing core.
> [Evolution Catalyst Detected]
> Item: Vanko-Core (Unstable Palladium Reactor)
> Energy Density: High
> Toxicity: High
> Subject: 42 (Mutated Niffler)
> Compatibility: 88%
> Risk: 12% chance of explosion/death
> Result: Evolution to Stage 2: [Void-Belly Niffler]
"Twelve percent chance of death," Lloyd muttered. "Better odds than Apparating without a license."
He looked at the Niffler. "Listen to me closely, you furry kleptomaniac.This isn't a shiny metal...this is energy and If you eat this, it might burn you from the inside out. Or, it might make you the greatest thief in New York."
Subject 42 didn't care about the risks. He climbed onto the desk and patted Lloyd's hand with a small, cold paw.... Trust me.
"Very well," Lloyd said. "Bottoms up."
He stepped back and cast a quick Protego rune in the air with his finger, just in case.
Subject 42 approached the core. He didn't bite it, he unhinged his jaw slightly....a disturbing anatomical feat common to magical creatures and placed his mouth over the glowing blue ring.
He inhaled...he didn't eat the metal, he ate the light.
Lloyd watched, fascinated, as the blue energy was sucked out of the glass cylinder. It flowed like liquid smoke into the Niffler's mouth. The core dimmed, flickering, until the glass shattered from the sudden thermal shock.
Subject 42 fell backward and began to slowly convulse.
"42?" Lloyd took a step forward.
The Niffler's black fur stood on end, blue sparks arced between his whiskers. His belly which was usually a soft, pinkish patch of skin where the pouch opening resided began to glow.
It wasn't a gentle glow, It was a deep violet light that seemed to eat the shadows around it.
It let out a shriek, his body stretching, bones popping.
Lloyd winced slightly. Magical evolution was rarely pretty as It was a type of biological alchemy...breaking down the base material to create something higher.
Gibraltar woke up in the corner and watched the light show with mild interest, then went back to chewing his metal hand.
After a minute that felt like an hour, the light faded and the convulsions stopped.
Subject 42 lay on the desk, panting.
He looked.....mostly the same except his fur was sleeker, darker, almost absorbing the light like velvet. But his belly pouch had changed, the opening was no longer just a flap of skin. It was a swirling, dark vortex the size of a coin.
Slowly, the Niffler sat up and burped. A small ring of blue smoke puffed out.
> [Evolution Complete]
> Name: Subject 42.
> Species: Void-Belly Niffler
> New Ability: [Matter Storage II] - The pouch is no longer physically limited by size, only by mass. Can store up to 500kg
> New Ability: [Energy Eater] - Can consume raw electricity or magical residue to heal
> Side Effect: Insatiable hunger for high-value items
"Five hundred kilograms," Lloyd whistled. "You are a walking U-Haul truck."
Subject 42 inspected his own belly as he poked the vortex. He seemed to be pleased. He looked around the desk, spotted Lloyd's brass weighing scales, and stuffed them into his pouch.They vanished instantly without creating a bulge.
"Impressive," Lloyd admitted.
"Now give them back."
The Niffler shook his head....No.
"We will negotiate later," Lloyd sighed.
He sat down, the adrenaline finally leaving his system entirely, replaced by a bone-deep exhaustion. He looked at the empty, shattered glass of the reactor core.
He had looted what he could and his Niffler has evolved but his mind kept drifting back to the man he had met, Ben Parker and the formula for the "webs."
"Peter Parker," Lloyd murmured, rubbing his temples. "A teenager who invents biomimetic adhesives."
The System had mentioned spider mutation and called the teenager and the little kid spider man. Lloyd didn't know what a Spider-Man was but in the Wizarding World, Acromantulas were apex predators. Spiders were weavers, trappers, architects of silent death.
"If there is a wizard or an Artificer in this city who styles himself after the Spider," Lloyd reasoned, "then he is a territorial creature."
He stood up and walked over to the corkboard on his wall.
He took a red string and pinned it to the map of Queens.
Pin 1: The Basement (Home)
Pin 2: Stark Tower (The Man of Iron)
Pin 3: Midtown High (The Spider Boy)
"The ecosystem is crowded," Lloyd whispered. "If I want to build my zoo, I cannot just be a looter, I need to be a player."
He looked at Gibraltar, who was now asleep, snoring with a sound like grinding gravel and looked at 42, who was trying to shove a stapler into his void pouch.
"We need a base," Lloyd decided. "A real one, not a basement under a curry shop. We need a sanctuary where I can grow the Devil's Snare to full size and where I can hatch a Dragon without the fire department being called."
He turned to his computer, the one he had Frankensteined together from trash. He tapped the keyboard.
Search: Abandoned Properties, New York.
Search: Warehouses, Sewers, Forgotten Subway Stations.
The screen flickered.
"Money," Lloyd muttered. "It always comes back to gold."
He looked at the Niffler.
"42...Tomorrow, we are not hunting trash. We are going to visit the Diamond District. I believe it is time we tested the capacity of that new belly of yours."
Subject 42 paused and looked at Lloyd.
A slow, toothy grin spread across the Niffler's face. It was the beginning of a beautiful, highly illegal partnership.
Lloyd blew out the candle on his desk, plunging the room into darkness, save for the faint, violet glow of the Niffler's pouch and the yellow eyes of the gargoyle.
But the city... the city was just waking up...
Authors Note:-
Hello everyone....
Hope you guys enjoyed the chapter.....
Please support your author with some power stones and collections.
Also could you guys please give my orginal a try....pretty please 🥺....it's actually very funny.....