Alex waited for a few seconds, not receiving any response from the incubating Celestial in front of him. He didn't give up, however, using various means to contact the entity to convey his intent to communicate. Unfortunately, even as he used the Mind and Soul Stones to directly convey his thoughts to the infant Celestial, it remained dormant. Though, despite the minor setback, the lack of response from the Celestial emboldened Alex somewhat as he felt it provided credence to the theory that the Celestials were also in a slumber like the Dimensional Lords and equivalent entities.
"Are you truly not conscious, Tiamat?" Alex's question was half directed at himself. While he would have loved to wait for a few minutes, or even longer, to see if the Celestial responded, Alex was on a time crunch. Every second that he maintained the barriers around the planets consumed thousands of units of Bioenergy, forcing him to speed things up.
Receiving no indication of the entity's consciousness, Alex no longer hesitated and shot forward, passing through the eggshell and coming face to face with the slumbering infant Celestial. With his current sensitivity to Cosmic energy, Alex could very well sense the swathes of it swirling all around the inside of the egg. While outside, all that was present was an inordinate amount of liquid magma. Inside, a large amount of Cosmic Energy was simply floating all around, slowly being absorbed by the incubating Celestial.
"…" Without a moment's hesitation, Alex tried to draw the energy into himself, only to encounter a significant amount of resistance. Frowning, he continued attempting to draw it in, going so far as to use Chaos energy to trap a single strand of the energy and forcibly pull it into himself.
Finally, with his fragmented Cosmic Manipulation mixed with Susan's Ambient Cosmic Manipulation that specifically focused on the skin, Alex finally drew that tiny strand of Cosmic Energy into himself.
[Cosmic Energy +0.02]
The moment the notification flashed in front of his eyes, Alex's eyes saw a whole different vision.
It was a scene from a few minutes ago, specifically when Alex had triggered an almost-riot in Talokan, causing the death of multiple people. Following that scene, he saw the entire lifetimes of every single one of the twenty or so Talokanil that had died. Simultaneously observing the life of those people from the point of their birth to their death. If it were anyone other than him, they would have instantly been overwhelmed by such a massive amount of information.
For Alex, however, who was used to constantly maintaining over fifty bodies at any given time, not to mention Gaia herself, who drew a part of her processing from him while relying mostly on the physical servers on Research Earth. To him, this influx of information was merely another Tuesday. Even then, however, he felt a faint sense of exhaustion creeping in due to the sheer amount of information that he had just processed in an instant. To maintain his peak state, he was forced to prematurely tap into his reserves of Soul Energy.
While this confirms that I am on the correct track regarding the generation of Cosmic Energy, the sheer amount of data and experience contained within is mind-melting… It's no wonder that the Inhuman from Hydra Earth that could use a tiny sliver of Cosmic Energy essentially possessed no personality.
Sighing, Alex brought his attention back to the situation at hand. While he wanted to absorb the large amount of Cosmic Energy right now, he had no such means to do so right now. Considering the effort he needed to expend to extract a tiny sliver of it, he needed to come up with a better way to deal with this raw Celestial Energy.
It's interesting that I would specifically see the memories of those that died in Talokan… Could be a coincidence. But it could also be something else.
He brought his attention back to the Celestial at hand.
"I was pretty confident in devouring you after seeing the state of your slumber, Tiamat, but this whole thing with Cosmic Energy has once again made me hesitate," Alex said to Tiamat. "I guess I really need a Celestial if I am going to get my hands on freely usable Cosmic Energy…"
After a moment of thought, Alex ignored the swathes of raw Cosmic Energy all around him and floated forward to stop right in front of the massive head of Tiamat. Even in an infantile state, it was almost as large as the moon, making Alex look like nothing more than a speck of dirt in front of it.
Undeterred, Alex raised his palm and placed it in the center of the Celestial's head, right between his six eyes. Instantly, an endless quantity of black material erupted from the point of contact as Alex controlled it to cover the Celestial's head. Just as the coverage area grew close to one of the eyes, having already covered miles, Alex encountered resistance. As his material tried to spread further, the Celestial's innate defenses seemed to get triggered as the same energy field that had blocked him from entering the core started pushing against him, trying to force him back. Not only that, but he was also dealing with the equivalent of an impenetrable wall as he tried to phase into the Celestial to further his goal, but it was proving to be impossible with his current means. After a few attempts, he realized that going inside the Celestial was a pointless effort right now, so he brought his full focus to the force field that was resisting his expansion.
At first, he was successful in using the physical strength provided by his Cosmic Physique to push back and continue expanding against the efforts of the force field, but let alone break, the force field seemed to be like some kind of stretchy membrane that was slowly getting stronger the more Alex pushed against it.
By the time he'd covered the distance between two adjacent eyes, the membrane had grown too strong for Alex's physical strength. Even after using enough strength that would otherwise casually shatter entire planets, he was helpless against the pushback of the membrane. Worse yet, he had to maintain his full resistive force throughout the process to prevent the membrane from further pushing against him and reversing his progress.
Watching his dwindling amounts of Bioenergy and the fact that he was already using Soul Energy to maintain his current state, Alex realized that he probably wouldn't be able to achieve his goal immediately. To that end, he made a final decisive move by once again activating the stones to their fullest power and even infusing the traces of Cosmic Energy that he had just gained into them. His Bioenergy consumption shot up exponentially as he used the authority of the six stones to wrap around the egg of the Celestial.
Forming a clear image of how he wanted to warp reality, he shared his intent with the stones, and they immediately released a blindingly bright light that momentarily surpassed the sun itself, releasing a scorching heat all around the surrounding area as Alex felt a huge drain on both his mind and body, feeling as if he'd just been rammed by a truck. Considering that was exactly how he found himself here in this universe, he felt an ironic sense of amusement at the situation.
When the blinding light faded, Alex saw in front of him the normal core of the planet formed from red-hot crystalline structures of iron compressed to a ridiculous degree. Not only that, but he also observed the edge of a lab at the core of the planet, already chock-full of all of the machinery needed to activate the planetary shield, powered by the geothermal energy of the planet's core.
He had essentially copied the planetary core of Research Earth and warped reality to paste it here.
As for Tiamat, who used to serve as the core of the MCU Earth in the past, its egg now had a new location.
Alex's body went into the lab to quickly activate the planetary shield before his scraps of remaining bioenergy were also exhausted, as another of his bodies moved to focus on the Celestial with the help of one of his hosts.
…
Susan was currently on a private tennis court that was part of the building, practicing against a machine that shot tennis balls at Mach 1 minimum. Dressed in a white sleeveless top, a matching miniskirt, and tennis shoes, she looked positively stunning.
"Sue, I need your help. Come on," Alex suddenly appeared beside her and grabbed her arm. Before she could react, Alex teleported her away, leaving the ball that had already been shot to strike the wall behind her, leaving a cracked indent as it bounced around.
The two of them appeared in the space above their planet. Sue looked at Alex with a frown.
"What's wrong?"
He gestured to their front with his chin, prompting Susan to look forward, only for her to squint her eyes at the burning yellow mass the size of the moon floating in the center of the Gaia Cluster. If it were anyone else, that was all they would see, but Susan was also very sensitive toward Cosmic Energy due to her powers, allowing her to also sense the colossal amount of that energy that was present within the sphere.
"What is that?" She asked, unable to look away for a single moment. "Did you create your own sun?"
"This isn't the time to explain. I need your help to contain it," Alex said. "Don't resist, I will take control of your body."
Before Susan could respond, Alex wrapped around her body, forming a black bodysuit as she felt her control slip away from her own limbs, leaving her to feel as if she were merely a passenger in her own body.
As Alex activated her powers and amplified them to the scale of the moon, Susan caught a glimpse of a crimson light on the other side of the glowing sphere. As Alex made her float closer to it, she noticed a head of glowing red hair on the horizon. She immediately identified the woman as Wanda after sensing the energy around the redhead.
[She seems mad…] Susan said to Alex telepathically.
[I've been making her do too many things recently. She just needs a little coaxing.]
***
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