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After finishing his explanation in one breath, the overweight security guard suddenly added,
"Do you believe it?"
In Henry's pre-transmigration world, he absolutely wouldn't have believed it. What the guard described was simply too absurd.
A woman falling from the sky? This wasn't City Hunter, where a bride drops out of the heavens.
But this was the Marvel Universe—and developments like this were hard not to connect to a certain woman. Marvel's officially certified top-tier combatant: Captain Marvel.
The memories of those movies were already very distant, distant enough that Henry usually didn't think about them. But with a super brain, all it took was a single hint for him to quickly follow the thread and recall everything.
Still, movie plots couldn't be treated as reliable foreknowledge. If events diverged even slightly, the entire direction could change. Besides, a two-hour film could never show every detail.
So, having already decided that he wouldn't get involved this time, Henry chose to ignore the matter.
He really didn't want another Mystique popping up, dragging him out on some random mission to fight a bunch of inexplicable aliens again.
…For some reason, it felt like he'd just raised a death flag.
The more he said he didn't want it, the more likely it seemed to happen.
…Okay, that feeling wasn't there until he started thinking about it. The more he thought, the worse it felt. Henry hurriedly shook his head, as if trying to shake bad luck away.
Still, seeing how eager the guard was to talk, Henry didn't want to brush him off.
"I believe it. Why wouldn't I? Mutants have already made the world chaotic enough. What's surprising about a few more weird things?"
"Right? But those guys just laughed at me, saying something like that was impossible."
Henry deliberately lowered his voice and said,
"Ever thought that maybe they're just saying that to make you shut up?"
The guard leaned in as well, whispering,
"That's exactly what I was thinking. So what do you think I should do?"
"Sell the story to some tabloid reporters and earn yourself a few drinks. What else are you planning to do? You don't seriously think you're going to be like Arnold, killing a Predator in the jungle and stealing its high-tech gear, do you? I think getting blown up by a self-destruct has better odds."
"Fair point." The potbellied guard patted his stomach, his eyes no longer as feverish as before.
Henry dropped the sorted tapes into the return slot and clapped his hands.
"All done. I'm heading out. How much longer are you guys stuck here?"
The guard replied,
"No idea. I've already reported everything to my company. They should've notified Blockbuster and RadioShack by now. Someone should've shown up ages ago, but nobody has. I don't know what's going on either."
"Well, I've got to get to work. See you."
"Mm."
Two strangers who'd met by chance didn't bother with goodbyes. A nod, and they went their separate ways.
---
While Henry was returning the tapes and chatting with the guard, a group of people had gathered on a distant rooftop. There was no unified style among them—blue-collar, white-collar, men, women, young and old.
Seeing such a group, Henry naturally stayed alert. If they were FBI or LAPD and their target was him, he'd need to plan an escape route immediately.
Escaping was simple: briefly leave their line of sight without being caught on surveillance cameras, then instantly use super-speed or flight to get away.
Using this method, no one had ever managed to stop him. Batman's signature vanishing act—turning around and disappearing—Henry had practiced diligently.
After all, he'd already been inexplicably stopped by the FBI twice and taken to strange places. No matter how dull someone was, they'd know it shouldn't happen a third time.
Otherwise, a dignified Kryptonian constantly getting randomly detained by official agencies, slapped with arbitrary labels and hauled away—annoying didn't even begin to describe it.
So whenever Henry sensed he might be targeted, he'd scout his exits early. The moment they made a move, he'd vanish completely.
Unless they sent Quicksilver after him!
That guy, though, had reportedly left the X-Men and wasn't staying at that gifted youngsters' school anymore. Then again, the X-Men roster was always in flux—only a few were permanent members. People came and went; nothing surprising there.
As it happened, the group on the rooftop showed no sign of acting against him. They were just standing together talking, so Henry stopped paying attention.
What he didn't know was that they were talking about him.
Or rather, they were shocked to discover, on planet C-53 in the Kree Empire's star chart, a living being that absolutely did not belong to this planet's native species—a Kryptonian.
> "Are you sure that guy, who looks no different from the natives, is a Kryptonian cockroach?"
One Skrull replied seriously:
> "Kryptonians possess a DNA lock. They're among the very few lifeforms in the universe that we cannot fully replicate. There's no way to mistake it.
My ability can only copy his appearance. If I go any further, I encounter rejection. I can't match his DNA either."
Another Skrull nodded in agreement:
> "I can confirm it as well. It's been a very long time since our history last encountered a Kryptonian. But the records describing how they repel our shapeshifting abilities match exactly what I experienced. That's definitive proof."
These people were Skrulls, an advanced extraterrestrial race that had arrived on Earth by accident. Their racial gift allowed them to shapeshift into any lifeform or non-living object they observed, even briefly copying memories.
Because of this gift, Skrulls harbored an instinctive hostility toward races with similar abilities—or those that could counter them.
For example, the D'Bari, who had approached Earth three years earlier in an attempt to seize the Phoenix Force. That alien race also possessed mimicry abilities, though not down to the DNA level.
Still, because of that ability, the D'Bari had repeatedly suffered attacks from the Skrull Empire. It was only because their homeworld lay within Shi'ar Imperial territory that they hadn't been wiped out entirely.
As for Krypton in this universe, it seemed to share some kind of history with the Skrulls—and judging by the way these Skrulls spoke, it wasn't a friendly one.
All of this was unknown to Henry, who had already stopped paying attention to the area.
Even if he had noticed, he wouldn't have been able to decipher the Skrull language on first hearing. Though his super brain allowed him to master many languages, it didn't include every known Earth language—let alone alien tongues.
So even if Henry had overheard that strange conversation, he probably wouldn't have given it much thought.
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