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Chapter 77

Technomancer in MCU

Earth

–Toby Mathers–

He chuckled as he saw the way Ed handled the press, the politicians, and their idiotic questions. He always liked that side of Ed, although he preferred a much direct way of shutting them all up but each to their own, he guessed.

He stretched as the people around him gave him a wide berth, owing to his massive stature, made especially more noticeable since the people in Japan were already so tiny.

While the grasslands had their own charm, the Cherry Blossom season in Tokyo had its own beauty as well. Relearning how to use the internet had been a pain in the butt to deal with, though nothing a quick knowledge-replicating spell couldn’t solve.

He was currently on a journey to witness the beauty of the place he was so desperately trying to protect.

…

While he was lounging on the grasslands after the mere two hours of sleep, curse his enhanced physique, he began pondering on his choices. The choices that led to him being sealed by his very own best friend.

He had to admit, that while the betrayal still stung, upon pondering his actions and how they must have looked to someone who had not gone through what he had experienced, he probably would have had similar reactions.

He then decided to do something that he never had the luxury to do in ḭ̶͔̪̈̇̈́ń̶̜̦̈̌͊̌̈́̎͂͛ͅf̷͕̺͚̻̗͙̏͊́̈͛e̵̪͍̋̃͝r̸̛͈̣̙̿͌̈́͑͑͗͘͜͠ò̶͓͓̩̾̈́̈́͠ś̴͍̖́̾̈́̈̍̂̕ ̵̨͓͍̭̗̟̣̺͈̐̈́͑̅̆̈́

Where he had to watch over his back every second of every day, meditation.

He had some practice from back when the Ancient One, bless her soul, had taken it upon herself to drill some concepts of inner peace in his thick skull but he had always been too stubborn to learn something new.

Even then, he felt as if the time and place matched for something boring and soothing, like meditation. So, he took it upon himself to self-reflect.

After laying down some rudimentary wards to make sure his energy signature could not be tracked, he sat cross-legged to meditate. Using the exercises that he could still remember, he dived deep into his mind to try and understand himself better. 

Because that was what he had come to Earth for. Until Ed had his time to do things his way, he would not obstruct their mission in any way, but he had a lot of free time during his imprisonment and while he was still far from forgiving them, he had to at least give Ed and the Ancient One credit that all that time sure did mellow him out.

The old him would have charged at Kamar Taj the first thing out of prison and slaughtered his way to the Ancient One who would have fought him and as much as he hated to admit it, imprisoned him once again. It was not sheer raw strength that made the Ancient One so feared, though she had that in spades as well, it was her mind. She could mindfuck people from far away, destroying any chance of them succeeding at all.

Upon entering his mindscape, he deadpanned at the hideousness of it all. 

“Yup, that’s me, I guess,” he muttered upon seeing the condition of his mind-space. 

Day by day, somehow, he begins to appreciate his imprisoners. Yup, it was that fucked up.

Honestly, it could not even be called a single mindscape. He could see deep fractures marred by different lines. The lines would indicate the different powers he had stolen from different demons and their lineages to further his goals. He was no saint, he would freely admit it. In his hunger for power and desperation to return home, he had decimated entire clans of demons, entire cities turned to dust in his wrath and many demon clans were now extinct due to him.

So, in a way, he deserved this.

His mind-space was a huge landscape, at the center of which laid his primary power, which he had not used in a long while. At some point, he simply became too powerful for the locals to challenge him anymore. They just complied with his demands and once they learned that he did everything just so he could go home, the enthusiasm levels skyrocketed.

There was no way he was mentally stable if his mind looked like a broken mirror with all the broken pieces having different colours and shapes.

So, he rolled up his metaphorical sleeves and got to work. Willing them to mend themselves didn’t work so he had to enter all the different pieces and bring them back to their normal states manually. 

Entering the purple part, which was the largest of the broken pieces, he came face to face with the first demon who had attacked him. Honestly, he would have loved to say that he had forgotten it, but that day was the building block that set the tone for his conquest of the entire dimension. Not wanting to waste any more time, he simply willed for the demon to be destroyed, telekinesis was handy like that.

But a confused expression came on his face when he realised that he could not feel his everpresent well of power in this space and before he could do anything about that, the demon noticed his presence, roared in his direction, and punched him in the face.

He still had his combat instincts from decades of battle so he could still defend himself. He swiftly noticed that he had been reduced to the state he was in when he consumed this demon for the first time. 

After that, it was child’s play to thoroughly dismantle the demon and with a swift punch in the throat, the demon breathed its last. 

After that, he came back into his mindspace and found that the broken piece’s edges had become semi-liquid and were fusing back into his mind-space, slowly losing its violet colour.

He smiled upon seeing his progress but it turned a bit stiff once he realised that he would have to repeat that process a hundred more times.

…

..

After a while, he opened his eyes, to find that he was glowing green and the grass around him had gained a red tint and was coiling below him as if trying to make a cushion. He chuckled and deactivated the flow of demonic energy out of his body and slowly floated down to stand on his two legs.

He immediately felt the difference as his thoughts became clearer and he could more thoroughly enjoy the simple senses, such as the fresh air or the pleasant sunlight hitting his body.

So many mundane things he was robbed of simply because of the imbalance in his powers. He wished the Ancient One had simply told him of this, instead of simply chucking him into the Sun prison and waiting for him to realise it by himself.

….

Coming back from his reverie, he found himself at the gates of the Cherry Blossom festival. With a ticket in his hand and a level of enthusiasm he seldom found in himself, he bounded into the garden, seeing a pink landscape as far as he could see.

The place was crowded and from time to time, people bumped into him and began apologizing profusely once they saw his stature but he simply waved them off and went on his way. His generals back home would have been terrified seeing his smile but it came to him naturally here.

Home…

He paused as he realised that he still thought of the hell dimension as his home. That was kinda sad.

As he was about to go take some pictures from the phone he had stol- ahem borrowed from someone, he stilled as he felt something break.

Specifically, he felt the link that tethered him to Ed break. 

His eyes widening in terror, he immediately sent all the energy he could and grabbed the side of Ed’s thread that was slipping away from his soul. The link came back up but he could feel Ed’s soul was on its legs and he was not even conscious. 

He immediately opened up his dimensional storage and removed the vial of blood he kept handy just in case he needed to locate Ed. 

For some reason, all the noise in the surroundings had died down. He looked up only to see people looking at him and his vial of blood weirdly. Well, it was a vial for someone of his size. For them, it must have looked like a small cup.

Feeling oddly bashful, he immediately cloaked himself and cast a notice-me-not variant around himself and the area he was in.

With a flex of his energy, he drew the ritual circle and willed his blood to spray on the ritual circle. As it lit up due to the immense energy in his blood, he placed a single drop of Ed’s blood in the center of the circle, with the help of his telekinesis skill.

All the while, he maintained a constant flow of healing energy to Ed’s soul, something which was very hard to do since all of his energy was demonic energy and it was not the most stable energy around. It was the opposite of stable energy.

As the ritual circle began drawing more and more of his energy, a small portal opened right above the floating drop of blood, showing him the starry sky.

As if searching for its target, the portal began swerving around and finally, as he could see a metal coffin in the distance, he immediately jumped through the portal. 

Covering himself in hellfire to ward off the effects of space, he swiftly reached Ed and immediately cursed when he realised that Ed’s condition was beyond his wildest expectations.

He immediately cast a curse on Ed once he realised that his body would not survive, even with his energy.

The curse was one of the more innovative curses he had seen in his time in hell. It was made to deprive somebody of all their senses and temporarily freeze their entire body. The doll the caster would have would become, for all intents and purposes, the main body, and their soul would naturally form a tether between the two.

Obviously, for a soul the size of Ed’s, the energy toll was making even him sweat.

But he could see the immediate effect as the soul began exerting its pressure on the homunculus he had with him. As the tether between them finally snapped into place, the homunculus began to take shape into the form of Ed.

He finally sighed in relief at that and opened up a portal to the one place he knew where Alfred would not be able to reach them, to the center of the Vibranium mound in Wakanda.

The only place on Earth where no external magical interference can take place. Not even Bast has authority over this place.

Not even Alfred knew of this place and as such, this place was where he wanted to finally have a one to one with Ed.

For old-time’s sake. 

________________________________________________________________

Wakanda

–Ed–

The first thing that he noticed when he came back to consciousness was the distinct lack of pain and the cold creeping feeling of his impending death that he expected when he activated his powers. In hindsight, it was rather foolish of him to do so but seeing the Ancient One in that state triggered something in him. He would make sure Dormammu would regret ever interfering in his life and he was sure that it was Dormammu and not Toby. In the split second he had dismantled Frank and his suit, he had accessed all the data in the suit, and from all the recordings of the fight along with the sensory data he could gather, he was certain that it was not Toby who was fighting them all along.

As he stood up with the help of his arms…

Wait..

His arms?

He swiftly stood up and checked his limbs, only to find them completely intact, and using them did not elicit any pain. 

“Quit jumping around, will you?” he heard the voice again. 

He looked around, only to see Toby in front of a Barbeque with the most delicious smell.

His jaw fell as Toby chuckled and waved him over.

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Word Count - 2067

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A/N - For some reason, this was really hard to write.