Chapter 168: That Was Close. You Almost Became the God of Stories.
Matthew glanced at the Ant-Man and Tony Stark who had traveled here from the Endgame timeline, then looked back at Loki, who was lying only two or three meters away from him.
If he remembered correctly, the "Loki, God of Stories," from the Marvel series Loki, had originated from this exact timeline.
And if Loki were to become the God of Stories, at minimum one condition needed to be met.
Loki needed to get his hands on the Tesseract, and then be hunted down by the Time Variance Authority for "disrupting the sacred timeline."
So, the question was: should he go ahead and give this future God of Stories a hand?
While Matthew was mulling this over, the "Tony Stark" disguised as a security guard approached from behind. "Sir, per Director Nick Fury's orders, we'll be taking custody of the Tesseract from here."
The "Tony Stark" studied Matthew through his goggles, a flicker of something odd in his eyes.
Was there someone like this present at the Battle of New York he himself had taken part in?
And why was that Peter kid already a member of the Avengers at this stage?
Matthew glanced at the "Tony Stark" who'd come over asking for the Tesseract, and decided not to call him out on it.
"Fury sent you?"
"That's right." The "Tony Stark" nodded.
Seeing that he intended to play this out to the end, Matthew asked another question.
"Do you know me?"
"Uh..."
The question caught the alternate-timeline Tony off guard.
In the timeline he came from, Matthew didn't exist at all, let alone someone he'd be acquainted with.
Seeing that "Tony" couldn't come up with his name after a long pause, Matthew didn't press further. He gave him a pat on the shoulder, then handed over the case containing the Tesseract.
The fact that he couldn't say Matthew's name confirmed that this man's timeline must be the "original storyline."
In that timeline, Matthew and Tony had never crossed paths, or rather, Matthew didn't exist there at all.
Everything had unfolded exactly as it originally had, which was precisely why the Avengers: Endgame time travel sequence existed in the first place.
Otherwise, given the current scale of his strength and influence, Matthew genuinely couldn't imagine what kind of brain-dead move he'd have to pull to lose to Thanos badly enough to trigger a time travel event at all.
He handed the case over to "Tony Stark."
Faced with this oddly-behaved man, "Tony" gave a simple nod of thanks, then walked off quickly toward the distance.
But he'd only taken a few steps when the Hulk suddenly came barreling out from around a corner, knocking him flat to the ground. The case flew out of his hands from the impact.
Not only that, the Tesseract itself fell out of the case, rolling to a stop right at Loki's feet.
Seeing this, Loki's eyes lit up.
He was just about to bend down and grab it when Matthew crooked one finger.
Whoosh—
The Tesseract turned into a streak of blue light and flew right back into Matthew's palm.
That was close. You almost became the God of Stories, kid!
He put the Tesseract back in the case.
This time, instead of handing it back to "Tony Stark," Matthew gave it to Natasha.
Looking at the alternate "Tony" scrambling back up off the ground, looking thoroughly worse for wear, Matthew shook his head helplessly.
Buddy, I gave you a shot and you blew it.
If I hand the Tesseract over to you again after this, Director One-Eye over there might start thinking I'm colluding with the enemy.
So, sorry about this.
Looks like you're stuck doing things the original way, off to another timeline to go track down the Tesseract.
On the other side, the alternate "Tony Stark," seeing his chance to make off with the Tesseract had completely evaporated, gave up on the act and walked off briskly.
With the wormhole over New York fully closed, the invasion of Earth had officially ended in failure.
In the time that followed, the city and government began reconstruction efforts across New York and the surrounding cities.
And in the spirit of fully committing to benefiting the people, Umbrella partnered with the relevant government departments and took on a third of the entire reconstruction effort.
Matthew charged only for cost and labor, without taking a single cent of profit from the people.
A truly model company for the people, if there ever was one.
This earned Umbrella an enormous boost in reputation almost overnight.
And compared to the original storyline, where the public had been fanatically devoted to the Avengers, with merchandise selling out everywhere, the people now had something even more worthy of their respect and admiration.
The Astartes Legion.
The strength they'd displayed during the crisis led the public to genuinely view the Astartes Legion as humanity's final line of defense.
This left Umbrella Corporation packed wall to wall with devoted fans.
To deal with the influx of Astartes enthusiasts, Matthew designated a special area and assigned two Astartes specifically to take photos and sign autographs for visitors, while also selling official merchandise on the side.
The merchandise included, but wasn't limited to: scale models of Astartes power armor, one-to-one replica Astartes action figures, and model replicas of the bolt guns and chainswords.
The day Umbrella launched its official merchandise line, business could no longer be described merely as "good."
It was an absolute sea of people, flags waving everywhere.
If Eleanor hadn't temporarily bought out several nearby storefronts and converted all of them into merchandise outlets, Umbrella employees might have had trouble even getting to and from work.
Once Matthew had finished setting all this up, the Astartes fanatics finally felt somewhat satisfied.
This battle had affected a great many people.
Umbrella represented one extreme. Vought represented the other.
Compared to the Astartes's now far-reaching reputation, Vought's "Super Seven" had fallen to the level of being treated as a complete joke.
The public's eyes don't lie.
They had seen everything the Astartes had done, and they had also seen footage of A-Train getting swarmed and shredded by Chitauri energy fire.
Vought, which had originally hoped to ride the Battle of New York to a wave of popularity, had instead lost everything on both fronts.
Lamplighter and The Deep were each crushed in succession by the Chitauri's mechanical Leviathans during the battle. A-Train took an energy round directly and lost an entire leg on the spot. Even Queen Maeve lost an eye in that fight.
The current state of the Super Seven could only be described as a name with nothing behind it, a roster of the old, the weak, the sick, and the maimed.
The original plan, the one meant to deliver both fame and fortune, had been ground to dust by a single battle.
Because of all this, Homelander's temper had grown even more unpredictable, and nobody inside Vought dared do anything that might set him off right now.
Of course, this battle's effects weren't limited to Vought.
Tony Stark, having now truly witnessed the Astartes Legion and the existence of extraterrestrial life firsthand, had started thinking about building his own iron legion.
But before that, he needed to develop a super artificial intelligence.
A super AI capable of completely overturning the world's technological landscape.
Otherwise, once the size of an iron legion grew large enough, JARVIS alone might not be able to manage a force of that scale.
Not only that, Tony had already decided on a name for this AI, well ahead of time.
Once the AI system actually came into existence, he would call it.
Ultron.