Obadiah frowned; the information in this passage left him even more bewildered.
"What do you mean? She looks down on Tony? Is there really a woman in this World who would look down on you?"
This wasn't mere flattery.
In Obadiah's eyes, Tony Stark possessed almost everything: youth, good looks, a genius intellect, wealth that could rival nations, and the status of soon becoming the absolute controller of the World's largest arms conglomerate.
What kind of woman couldn't a man like that obtain?
Tony set down his coffee cup and walked back to the motorcycle. "Alright, that's enough about Mavuika. She's just a friend. I'm fixing her bike because I want to, and it doesn't prevent me from handling company business at the same time... Where were we? The procurement price for titanium alloy?"
Obadiah wanted to say more, but seeing that Tony had already picked up his tools again and clearly didn't want to continue the topic, he could only shake his head and pull his attention back to the business documents.
"Fine, if you insist." Obadiah flipped open the folder.
"But Tony, at least promise me one thing: don't let her touch any sensitive documents or designs. The company's security must come first."
"Sure, sure," Tony replied nonchalantly.
...
After Mavuika left Stark Tower, she didn't call for a car, nor did she head for the subway station.
She crossed two streets and turned into a secluded alleyway filled with piled-up construction materials and trash cans, deserted in the early morning.
Mavuika took a step forward, and golden-red flames rose from beneath her feet, gently enveloping her entire body.
Those weren't Burning flames, but a manifestation of pure energy—warm but not scorching, bright but not blinding.
Within the flames, her figure transformed into a streak of light and soared into the sky.
Mavuika controlled the energy output to minimize the impact, leaving only a slight hum from the air disturbance.
A few seconds later, she had already passed through the clouds and entered the stratosphere.
Below, New York City looked like an exquisite model, its street grid clearly visible, with Central Park resembling a green emerald.
Above, the sky shifted from azure to deep blue, and finally to the black of space as the stars began to appear.
Mavuika continued her ascent. The atmosphere grew thinner and the temperature plummeted, but for an Asgardian divine body, this posed no threat whatsoever.
She didn't even need to consciously maintain any protection; the power of the Eternal Flame naturally formed a stable life-support field around her.
Upon entering low Earth orbit, she stopped and suspended herself in the vacuum.
Here, her perception became even clearer.
She transformed into a golden-red meteor, streaking through the vacuum at a speed too fast for the naked eye to track.
At the same time, above a desert somewhere on Earth, a uniquely shaped spacecraft was climbing.
Inside the ship, the atmosphere was tense and complex.
Five people and a cat sat in the cockpit.
Nick Fury gripped the armrests of his seat tightly. This was his first time on a craft that could fly out of the atmosphere, and the pilot was a former Kree warrior who had just recovered her memories and was still emotionally unstable.
He looked at the ground receding outside the window, trying to maintain a calm expression.
Carol Danvers, a U.S. Air Force pilot, was focused on piloting the craft.
Her movements were still a bit rusty, like remembering how to ride a bicycle she hadn't touched in years, but muscle memory was rapidly returning.
"Altitude eighty thousand feet, about to leave the atmosphere," she reported, her voice tinged with suppressed excitement.
In the co-pilot's seat sat Maria Rambeau, Carol's former best friend and one of the few who had never given up searching for her.
Maria looked at Carol's profile with a sense of relief in her eyes and a faint smile.
In the back seat, Talos, the leader of the Skrulls who had come to Earth, rubbed his hands together somewhat anxiously, his skin green.
The final passenger was an orange cat, currently yawning lazily on Maria's lap, seemingly indifferent to everything.
A few hours ago, all of this would have been unimaginable.
Fury recalled the frantic experience just now—from meeting Carol, tracking the Skrull who had attacked them, to discovering that Carol had a file in S.H.I.E.L.D. and was actually an Earthling who had been kidnapped and brainwashed by the Kree.
And that the Skrulls were actually refugees fleeing Kree persecution, having come to Earth only to find the light-speed engine research data left by Dr. Hansen...
The truth was being revealed layer by layer like an onion, each more shocking than the last.
And now, they were heading toward the ship where Talos's kin were hiding.
That ship was parked in low Earth orbit, disguised as space junk, holding over twenty Skrull refugees who were waiting for a rescue that might never come.
"We're almost there," Talos pointed to a dot on the navigation screen.
"Right at that position. The visual cloaking is active; it's invisible to both radar and the naked eye."
Carol nodded and adjusted their course. The ship smoothly crossed the Kármán line and entered outer space.
Earth lay behind them like a massive blue gem, swirled with white clouds.
"I see it," Carol said.
In the seemingly empty space ahead, a faint ripple suddenly appeared, like heat waves distorting the view.
As the ship approached, the ripples expanded, revealing the silhouette of a massive spacecraft.
It looked unlike any human spacecraft, with sleek lines and a surface that shimmered with a metallic luster.
The hull featured numerous observation windows, some emitting a warm light, as it hung quietly in the starry expanse.
"My God..." Maria whispered in awe.
A look of relief appeared on Talos's face. "Six years... we've been hiding here for six years."
As the ship slowly approached the Skrull mothership, Carol was about to send a docking request when her eyes suddenly widened.
"What is that?" She pointed to a spot beside the mothership.
Everyone crowded around the window.
At the bow of the Skrull mothership, there was a person.
No, not attached to the hull, but floating in space, wearing no spacesuit or life-support equipment.
A faint golden light emanated from her body, and her long golden-red hair seemed to burn like fire in the vacuum. She wore a simple leather jacket and jeans, as if she had just been teleported to outer space straight from the streets of New York.
The person had her back to them and was reaching out to touch the hull of the Skrull mothership.
Talos said nervously, "Who is she? Why is she out in space?"
Fury narrowed his eyes; the distance was still too great to see clearly.
Just then, the person turned around.
Mavuika saw their ship. She didn't seem surprised at all; instead, she smiled and waved, as if bumping into an old friend on the street.
Carol's expression grew tense. "Be careful! She might be a Kree!"
To travel through the Universe with one's physical body was clearly not something an ordinary person could do; even within the Kree Empire, Carol had never seen such a being.
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