"Coulson, relax," Rowan Mercer said with a smile as he ended the call on the academy's training field. "Yes, the island is mine. It's a floating campus. We're relocating the school up there. No danger. Tell them to breathe."
The island already carried layered concealment spells, anti-civilian wards, and a powerful loyalty enchantment. If Rowan wanted, it could hover silently above the city without a single soul noticing.
He chose not to.
The point wasn't spectacle for its own sake. It was memory. Fear, once felt, carved deep grooves. He wanted certain people to remember what helplessness tasted like. To recall the terror left behind by Kuur's descent. Only then would they truly understand what the academy represented.
Politicians rotated in and out like seasonal decorations. Names changed, agendas didn't. Every administration eventually reached the same conclusion: the academy was too powerful to ignore and too dangerous to leave uncontrolled. Sooner or later, someone would try to put a leash on it.
That was why they needed reminders.
The public wasn't much different. Right now, admiration was loud. Support was enthusiastic. Fanatics even. But mass opinion was soft clay. Push it the right way, heat it fast enough, and it warped.
Heroes rose on cheers and fell on headlines.
Rowan had watched it happen before. Someone stronger, kinder, more selfless than him had been turned into a criminal overnight by manipulated narratives. He had no intention of repeating that mistake.
Fear anchored people. When survival was at stake, rhetoric lost its bite.
"They only behave when they're scared," Logan said, cigar between his teeth, grinning as Rowan pocketed the phone. "You did this on purpose."
"Of course I did," Rowan replied calmly.
He raised a hand, conjuring a stone archway etched with runes, a massive portal key anchored to space itself.
"Alright, everyone," Rowan said, his voice carrying across the grounds. "Line up and step through. From today on, our school is in the sky."
Teachers and students moved with barely contained excitement, filing through the archway and emerging on the floating island above. Once the grounds were clear, Rowan turned back to the campus itself.
The buildings, the labs, the underground facilities, years of layered technology and magic were far too valuable to abandon.
With another spell, the entire structure tore free from the earth and rose, intact, embedding itself seamlessly into the heart of the island like a fitted core.
While Rowan oversaw the relocation, something else arrived on Earth.
A cloaked spacecraft slipped into the atmosphere and descended into an uninhabited forest in Florida. Its hatch opened, and a woman stepped out, clad in dark leather, her skin a vivid green.
"This is C-53," she muttered. "Low-tier civilization. Minimal native threat."
Caution lingered in her eyes anyway.
Gamora of the Zen-Whoberi. Adopted daughter of Thanos. Assassin. Spy. Survivor.
Her mission was simple on paper: infiltrate the planet and retrieve the Space Stone. Deliver it to Thanos.
She had no intention of doing that.
Her real plan was far more profitable. Find the Stone. Sell it to the Collector. Disappear forever with the credits.
She pressed a metallic plate against her skin. The green faded, replaced by human tones.
Disguise complete.
Drawing a compact scanner from her pack, Gamora activated it. The device hummed, reacting faintly.
"There," she whispered. "That direction."
Far beyond Earth's atmosphere, at the nearest jump point, space twisted.
A massive ship bearing the Ravagers' mark burst into realspace, engines flaring as it locked onto a blue-green planet ahead.
And changed course toward it.
...
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