"Boss, congratulations. You've officially become the dream man of every woman in America."
Urd placed a stack of documents onto Drex Valen's desk.
Drex looked up. Her fitted black office skirt hugged her curves tightly, the sharp line of her long legs almost glaring beneath the office lights.
Despite her professional expression, he caught the edge hidden beneath her words.
He shrugged.
"I'm guessing there's a lecture coming."
Urd crossed her arms.
"So you're not going to explain why you suddenly decided to put on a walking war machine and go play superhero?"
There was obvious concern behind her tone. She didn't approve of what he'd done yesterday. Not even a little.
Drex leaned back in his chair.
"Relax, Urd. I'm not reckless enough to gamble with my own life."
Her lips parted slightly, like she wanted to argue back. In the end, though, she swallowed it.
"I'd rather not have to find a new boss."
That was all she said.
More than five months later, Blade Technology Industries officially completed construction on its Los Angeles branch.
Drex relocated there almost immediately and turned it into the company's new headquarters.
The Washington D.C. office wasn't abandoned, though. It simply became a secondary branch office. Not that Blade Technology Industries had many employees to begin with.
Still, there was good news.
Tony Stark had been missing for far too long, and the public had essentially accepted him as dead.
Stark Industries' stock price had been spiraling downward for weeks.
Obadiah Stane had exhausted every method available to stabilize the situation, but nothing worked. Confidence in Stark Industries kept collapsing, and employees in the weapons division were beginning to fear for their future.
Blade Technology Industries stepped in at exactly the right moment.
With aggressive recruitment offers and significantly better compensation packages, they poached a massive portion of Stark Industries' weapons department.
A few veterans stayed behind after Obadiah raised salaries and benefits. Many of them had spent decades at Stark Industries and still held emotional loyalty to the company. Besides, even without Tony Stark, Stark Industries could continue profiting from its massive catalog of weapons patents.
But the talent Blade Technology Industries acquired was more than enough.
Combined with the durable, brutally practical weapon systems designed by Ivan Vanko and his father, Blade Technology Industries expanded into the conventional arms market with terrifying momentum.
For Hammer Industries, it was disastrous.
Both Stark Industries and Blade Technology Industries had begun aggressively competing for contracts involving standard military weapons and heavy ordnance.
Hammer Industries had always survived by scavenging leftovers from Stark Industries.
Now there were no leftovers.
Anyone with half a brain knew which company's weapons they'd rather buy.
Drex had zero interest in Hammer Industries' engineers.
Its production lines, though?
Those were valuable.
Unfortunately, Justin Hammer hadn't been pushed far enough into desperation yet, which meant he probably wouldn't sell.
Not yet.
Drex could wait.
Wanda and Pietro could barely believe the life they were living now.
Even Washington D.C. felt infinitely more prosperous than Sokovia, and Drex had enrolled them in elite private schools.
Public education in America operated on a philosophy of freedom. Students could study if they wanted to, or waste their time if they didn't. Even motivated students often received mediocre education at best.
Private schools were different.
Those institutions trained elites.
Smaller classes. Better teachers. Ruthless standards.
They existed to maintain the gap between the wealthy and everyone else.
Wanda understood how rare this opportunity was.
Even if she couldn't fully explain why.
She was mature enough to know that nothing in the world came free. Every gift carried a price attached somewhere beneath the surface.
She just didn't know what her price would be yet.
Pietro adapted much faster.
A little too fast.
The excitement of a major American city swallowed him whole. Video games, clubs, alcohol, street racing, outrunning police cruisers through D.C. traffic for fun...
He embraced all of it.
That morning at school, Wanda overheard her classmates talking excitedly about the Dark Knight and Drex Valen.
Curious, she asked a few questions.
Only then did she learn that Drex had become some kind of public hero overnight.
According to the news, he had helped Brooklyn police stop a violent bank robbery the previous day.
Most of the wealthy and middle-class kids at school admired him openly.
Very few didn't.
That steel armor capable of flying through the sky had burned itself into people's memories.
Compared to the superhero comics dominating the shelves, Batman, Superman, the Justice League, all of it suddenly felt less fantastical.
Because Drex Valen was real.
A real superhuman standing in the middle of reality.
After school, Wanda bought a copy of the Daily Planet.
Drex's face dominated the front page in full color.
The Genius Billionaire of a New Era. The Dark Knight Protecting the Shadows.
The headline was dramatic enough to make her blink twice.
Still, the Daily Planet's sales were exploding. Public fascination with superheroes had detonated overnight, and Drex sat at the center of it.
At that moment, he might have been the hottest figure in global news media.
Unfortunately for reporters everywhere, he refused all interviews.
Urd had also been intercepting a flood of aspiring models and socialites trying to get close to him.
Wanda stared silently at the photograph.
Then she reached out and lightly touched the image of Drex's face.
Something stirred deep inside her chest.
A quiet, dangerous certainty.
And in that moment, she made her decision.
Inside the newly constructed Los Angeles laboratory, Drex had abandoned most of the elaborate security traps from his earlier facilities.
Instead, the entrance featured a far simpler mechanism.
A strength tester.
Anyone capable of exerting one hundred tons of force could open the alloy blast door.
Behind it stood his newest creation.
The Dark Knight Armor.
The black cape flowing behind the armor gave it a sharp, intimidating silhouette.
Drex had no intention of actually using a cape in combat.
It existed purely because it looked cool.
Still, the design sparked another idea.
Something even better.
Funnels.
More specifically, the remote weapon systems used by the Strike Freedom Gundam.
After extensive redesign work, the Dark Knight's cape transformed into eight blade-shaped floating cannons mounted across the armor's back.
Under normal conditions, they remained attached to the suit and functioned as auxiliary thrusters.
Once deployed, however, Drex could control them directly through psionic synchronization.
Each drone possessed two firing modes.
The first was a high-energy laser cannon powerful enough to punch through heavy armor with terrifying force.
The second was a rapid-fire plasma barrage mode designed for sustained suppression.
Together, the floating cannons could operate independently for up to ten continuous hours before returning to the armor for recharging.
But that wasn't all.
Each drone also possessed a melee configuration.
Once activated, the floating cannons transformed into high-frequency vibrating blades.
Under Drex's telekinetic control, the system effectively became an eight-sword combat style.
And if he personally wielded two additional blades...
Ten swords.
A style that bordered on insanity.
Of course, nobody except Drex could realistically operate something like that.
Controlling eight or even ten weapons simultaneously demanded a brain powerful enough to divide focus into multiple streams at once.
For anyone else, it would be impossible.