"You're back. Nobody spotted you, right?" Bant asked the moment he saw Connors return with something slung over his shoulder.
"No," Connors replied, setting the device down on the ground.
"When I went to retrieve it, Iron Man was trying to find you, scanning the river, and there were also people cleaning up the battlefield."
Connors recalled walking through Stark Tower and seeing a man yanking a very curvy woman out of an air duct.
After thinking it over, he still asked, "They didn't look like police. Who are they?"
"S.H.I.E.L.D.," Bant said. "More or less the people who handle stuff like this."
He tossed Dongwu aside, transformed into Grey Matter, and began studying Dongwu's Gene Variator.
Seeing that, Connors added, "I stopped its program, but I don't know how to reverse it."
"Don't worry. I can handle it."
"Then what about him? Hand him over to that S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Connors asked.
Before Bant could answer, Dongwu spoke first, sneering, "Doesn't matter where you lock me up. I, the genius Dongwu, will definitely come back!"
"Come back?" Bant laughed coldly.
"Why do you think I'm going to spare your life?"
Hand Dongwu to S.H.I.E.L.D.?
No chance.
Bant did not even hesitate, shaking his head immediately.
What kind of garbage was S.H.I.E.L.D.? Bant knew perfectly well.
Even setting aside the part infiltrated by HYDRA, just looking at Nick Fury's faction alone, they were not good people either.
That so called King of Spies doubted everything and trusted nothing, like he suffered from paranoia, treating everything as a threat and wanting every kind of power under his control.
And those people were obsessed with that damn Super Soldier Serum, so if Dongwu fell into their hands, he would probably be "in" one moment and "out" the next.
Unlike Connors, Dongwu was a mad scientist to the bone.
Even if he were imprisoned for decades, it would not change his desire to destroy the world.
Even with a Null Void Projector, Bant still would not lock him up.
That place was basically a bug raising pit, and there was even a chance Dongwu could end up becoming some powerful Null Void warlord.
Bant had no interest in getting tangled up with that old bastard forever.
Besides, the Ancient One only told him to resolve these multiverse crises, but never explained exactly how.
So Bant would solve it his way.
Since Dongwu wanted so badly to become a mutant creature, then he could die as a monster.
Only a dead enemy was a good enemy.
Not long after, Bant learned how to operate the Gene Variator.
He reversed the program and turned Connors back into a human.
Compared to Dongwu, Bant valued Connors far more, because he was intelligent and not evil.
"Now that I know the secret of your watch, I'm guessing you can't freely choose everything either, right?" Connors said.
Bant was a little surprised.
"I'm planning to start a company. I want you to work for me," Bant said.
"Why not?" Connors answered.
Connors was smart and open minded, and he did not feel especially depressed about the possibility that Bant might control his life going forward.
"If you hadn't made that serum, I probably would've already caused a disaster," he said with self blame.
"I'm grateful to you, so I have no reason to refuse."
"All my inventions can belong to you. I only have one request," Connors said. "Use them to benefit humanity."
"Of course." Bant nodded.
"This incident is tied to you. The Lizard first appeared at Oscorp Tower, everyone knows that," Bant said.
"And to stop the company's stock from continuing to fall, several Oscorp board members have dumped all the responsibility on you. The moment you show your face, you'll probably be arrested immediately."
"Those bastards! They're the ones who wanted human experiments before the tech was even mature!" Connors clenched his fists in fury, but he also felt deeply helpless.
"Don't worry. Once things die down, I'll get you a new identity," Bant said.
"For now, you'll have to put up with staying here for two days. Once my lab is ready, you can move in."
Connors had no objections, but there was something else weighing on him.
"My wife and my son…"
"They're being watched by the police right now, but they're safe," Bant said.
Connors nodded.
Then Bant transformed into Four Arms and completely destroyed the Canary Device.
As for the Gene Variator, it was small enough, so he simply took it with him.
After that, Bant took Dongwu and left the sewers.
He planned to cremate Dongwu, but the methane levels in the sewer were too high, and lighting a fire would trigger a violent explosion.
On the way, he also contacted Felicia and Mary Jane to confirm both of them were fine, and he told Felicia that tomorrow's date was still on.
At the same time, at Stark Industries, now reduced to ruins, Iron Man descended from the sky and his armor opened.
"Nothing. We found nothing. They're gone!" Tony's expression looked awful.
The other monster was one thing, but that Flame Man who claimed to be some kind of "security" had a body temperature in the thousands of degrees Celsius, and he still vanished into thin air.
"You've really disappointed me, Tony Stark!"
Nick Fury arrived at some point without anyone noticing, and the moment he saw Tony, he walked up with a dark face and started ripping into him.
"Two monsters fought like crazy in Stark Tower, blew up the whole building and two nearby streets, causing losses in the hundreds of billions!"
"And our so called superhero, Iron Man, not only got beaten into a mess, he can't even find their shadows!"
Tony's face turned even darker than Fury's.
"Shut up. Like you did any better," Tony snapped.
"Did you and your agents accomplish anything? You only crawled out to clean up after they left. I'm not interested in you showing off in front of me!"
Tony was furious.
Almost all of tonight's damage landed on Stark Industries, so naturally the bill, hundreds of billions of dollars, would be paid by Young Master Tony.
His own building got blown up for no reason, and that bald idiot still dared to show up and point at his nose and yell.
And then Tony added, "Who's to say this monster wasn't something you people created yourselves?"
Hearing that, even Nick Fury lost a bit of confidence.
He knew S.H.I.E.L.D. had never created anything like that, but the military really had made a green monster, one that was even more terrifying than what appeared tonight.
Still, military business was not S.H.I.E.L.D.'s business, and the two sides were not exactly on friendly terms.
Since force was not working, Fury softened his tone.
"No matter what, you saw it. Some strange life forms are already a threat, and your current capabilities aren't enough to deal with them," Fury said.
"We need a specialized team."
"Your little superpowered boys' club again?" Tony sneered.
"It's the Avengers," Nick said. "And you might not even qualify to join. We need to evaluate you."
Dr. Dongwu's arc ends here, with his ending revised.
At first, the plan was to turn Tony into a Lizard too, but after writing for a while, it was scrapped, lol.
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