From his hiding spot in the distance, Mr. Blue watched everything with ravenous intensity. His oversized head throbbed under the immense power granted by the Hulk serum.
Abomination had kicked him away earlier, and a single drop of Hulk blood had landed on his skull. His brain had undergone a staggering transformation. The smarter he became, the less he wanted to leave.
Mr. Blue couldn't tear himself away from those strange creatures.
With his enhanced intellect, he had run billions of calculations on every scrap of information from the moment he first saw Adam and the Xenomorphs. There was no doubt he possessed memory and processing power far beyond any conventional supercomputer.
He had immediately recognized the lethal beauty of the Xenomorphs as living weapons. Every curve of their bodies was engineered for combat.
He also noticed variations between different types and began forming theories, which only made him more reluctant to flee.
Then he witnessed Abomination's chest explode. His whole body trembled.
Not just from fear... mostly from excitement.
"So there are monsters like this in the world. Now I understand why that man carried the egg… why the spider-like thing died right after latching onto Blonsky's face…"
"It was all for parasitism. Everything was to steal Blonsky's power!!"
That realization alone would have astonished him, but it wasn't enough to make him risk his life staying. Not until he saw the newborn Xenomorph's inner jaws... fast as a bullet... punch straight through Abomination's skull, which should have been tough enough to withstand missiles.
Combining all the data, Mr. Blue reached a chilling conclusion.
"These things can parasitize different hosts and take their power… or rather, their genes? But genetic material is incredibly complex. How do they rapidly select the useful parts? What's the criteria for useful versus useless?"
Was it simply extracting combat-effective genes? Or something even more extreme... claiming every superior gene, discarding the rest, and emerging with far greater potential than the host?
He could barely believe it. If true, these unknown creatures were perfect lifeforms.
He couldn't imagine how the mysterious man had obtained them, let alone how he controlled them.
"Some kind of psychic link like Professor X? Or do they imprint like birds, treating the first person they see as their mother?" Mr. Blue's heart hammered wildly.
As a scientist, he had his ambitions, but one instinct was absolute: the pursuit of perfection in his field.
In Mr. Blue's eyes, Abomination, Hulk... none of them compared to the Xenomorphs. They were all failed prototypes from the creator's workshop.
The stronger, more exceptional, and more promising the host, the more overwhelmingly superior the chestburster became. How could anything compete with that?
Most people never fully realized their potential. Time and energy were limited; no one could master everything they were capable of.
But Xenomorphs were different. They inherited every superior gene from their host, maxing out their potential. After a short maturation period, they surpassed the original host entirely.
It was terrifying. Suffocating. Beautiful.
"Mine. These are mine!! These perfect creatures belong to me... the greatest biologist in human history, Samuel Sterns!" Mr. Blue's swollen head finally stopped expanding. His intelligence had skyrocketed roughly five hundred times in an incredibly short span.
Intelligence was one thing. Facing these unheard-of monsters in person, his hysterical greed and desire nearly drove him mad.
"And that man... he withstood a dying Blonsky's attack. His body isn't normal either! There must be some connection to these lifeforms. Maybe that's how he controls these beautiful creatures?"
Even with his genius-level mind, the lack of information and unknown variables caused his thoughts to stall. The logical dead-ends were driving him crazy.
Suddenly, Mr. Blue saw Adam turn and look directly in his direction.
Their eyes met.
"He spotted me!" The thought flashed through his mind.
"Looks like the big-headed guy survived. I wonder if he's smarter than the other Samuel Sterns."
Adam glanced over while maintaining a mental link with the new Xenomorph from Abomination, also keeping tabs on Mr. Blue's changes.
In the comics, Samuel Sterns... the Leader... was one of the eight smartest people on Earth, gaining his intellect from accidental gamma radiation exposure.
This version had been boosted by a drop of Hulk serum instead.
Adam could now say with certainty that this universe wasn't purely the movie version.
Given Marvel's infinite multiverse, making sweeping assumptions about an entire universe without thorough exploration was a good way to get killed at the worst possible moment.
Caution was the safest approach.
Even if it were the movie version, it wouldn't be safe. Multiversal gods operated on another level, meddling across realities, setting traps and debts everywhere. Who knew what kind of multiversal abomination might crawl out of some forgotten corner?
And beyond the multiverse, the even larger cosmic entities were far more dangerous.
By the time things reached the seventh multiverse, various true heavyweights had elevated the entire Marvel hierarchy to omnipotent conceptual levels.
Adam sent a messenger Xenomorph to shadow Mr. Blue discreetly, then looked up into the distance.
The commotion here had already drawn attention. He had expected someone to arrive soon.
What he hadn't expected was not Blade, Iron Man, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, or any other heroes or villains.
Instead, it was… well, a Superman?
The figure wore a tight blue-and-gold suit and hovered effortlessly in the air without any visible means of support. His expression was cold, and golden energy flickered dangerously in his eyes, clearly ready to fire at a moment's notice.
Aside from the missing cape and underwear, he looked remarkably like the Man of Steel from the neighboring universe.
On the surface, Adam remained impassive, but inside he felt deeply unsettled. He never imagined the first arrival would be this guy.
One of the eleven Eternals who had been stationed on Earth for thousands of years... the warrior tasked with ushering in the Celestials' birth, which would indirectly destroy the planet and wipe out humanity…
Ikaris.