The air inside the bridge settled into a complex and quiet atmosphere after Tony's minutes-long narrative, which condensed five years of turmoil and change.
Outside the window, the lights of New York harbor remained as they were, and the night sky was tranquil, as if those thrilling battles, losses, rescues, and Universe-level crises were merely undercurrents buried deep beneath the city's memory, while the surface maintained the appearance of prosperity and peace.
Artoria leaned quietly against the Captain's seat, digesting this information.
The Endgame had concluded, and the shadow of Thanos had been dispelled by the blood and sacrifice of the heroes; the cost was heavy, but hope remained.
The structure of the Avengers had changed, familiar old friends each had their own destinations, and new challenges might be brewing, but at least for this moment, Earth had ushered in a relatively peaceful period of respite and reconstruction.
She closed her eyes slightly, her fingertips tapping unconsciously on the armrest of the seat.
Over thirty years of time, two completely different journeys through the Universe, life-and-death struggles, the collision of civilizations and philosophies, and the unreserved teaching and unconditional trust of her mentors... had long since tempered that soul, which had once arrived here with a touch of greenness and unease, into someone steady and clear-sighted.
Teacher Hexi's lazy wisdom and deep care occasionally hidden behind mischief, Queen Keisha's majesty and all-seeing gaze, the loyalty and faith of the Angel Warriors, and even the experience of clashing with entities like Suma Li, Morgana, and Karl... all of these were like the most precise carving knives, sculpting her into who she was today.
Maturity did not just mean an increase in age or strength.
It was more a clear cognition of one's own positioning, a definite demarcation of the boundaries of responsibility, a calm acceptance of the changes in the World, and... knowing how to exercise restraint and make choices even after possessing sufficient power.
"It seems that during the time I was away, everyone... has had a very difficult time."
Artoria opened her eyes, her gaze clear and calm as she looked at Tony, "You too, Tony. You've worked hard."
There was no excessive comfort, no affectatious sentimentality.
A simple "You've worked hard" made Tony's tense shoulders relax almost imperceptibly.
He twitched the corner of his mouth and waved his hand, "It's all in the past. Things are good now. Pepper and Morgan... they make me feel that all the previous turmoil was worth it."
Artoria nodded with a smile.
She could understand the satisfaction and peace that came from protecting her family, which was completely different from the past.
This was also a part of growth.
"Then," she changed the subject, her tone becoming pragmatic and clear again, "Since the big trouble has come to a temporary end, and we are back, perhaps we can take care of some small troubles while we're at it, to avoid any future issues."
Tony raised an eyebrow, "Small troubles? What do you mean? Those scattered, insignificant remnants of HYDRA? Or those dark corners on Earth that can never be cleaned up?"
"Let's start with the most stubborn 'tumor'."
Artoria looked at Minerva beside her, "Xiao Xiao, activate the Hyperion's high-dimensional information perception array, combine it with the chronos core's space-time information backtracking assistance, and conduct a comprehensive, non-intrusive scan of the Dark Plane and high-dimensional information characteristics of Earth."
"Focus the screening targets: all active individuals and strongholds that have a deep connection with the known core ideology, organizational structure, and energy characteristics of HYDRA."
"Establish a feature model and conduct global tracking and marking."
"Understood."
Minerva replied softly, starlight flickering slightly in her eyes, as she operated the control panel at the lieutenant's station quickly and gracefully.
On the main screen of the bridge, it quickly switched to a holographic star map with Earth as the background, and countless tiny points of light representing different information flows began to emerge, flow, and be quickly analyzed and filtered.
Tony watched intently; although he was still in the preliminary understanding stage of concepts like "Dark Plane scanning" and "high-dimensional information characteristics," it did not prevent him from feeling the terrifying information processing and reconnaissance capabilities represented by this system, which were several generations ahead of Earth's existing technology.
"This thing called HYDRA is like a cockroach that you just can't kill."
Tony crossed his arms and commented, "Fury and the Captain have cleaned them out several times, and every time they thought they had dug them all out, a few more would pop out from some nook or cranny after a while."
"If you can root out this bunch of rats in the gutter, I'll thank you on behalf of the Captain, and on behalf of this World."
"You're welcome, it's a small effort."
Artoria's tone was flat, as if she were talking about a trivial matter.
For her, having mastered some of the top Angel technologies such as "Order Interference" and "Logical Definition," carrying the authority of the "star dome" king sword, and having greatly improved her own psionic and mechanic heritage, tracing and locking onto the remnants of a terrorist organization that mainly operated on the physical and information levels within Earth was indeed not a high-difficulty challenge.
Especially under the premise of not causing large-scale panic and not directly interfering with the internal affairs of the civilization, conducting precise information screening and positioning.
The scanning and comparison proceeded at an astonishing speed.
Minerva combined the HYDRA historical archives, personnel characteristics, and technical identifiers obtained from the S.H.I.E.L.D. partial public or semi-public databases that Tony had quietly "borrowed," along with the Hyperion's own powerful information perception capabilities, to build an extremely detailed HYDRA correlation feature model.
This model not only included conventional information such as personnel identities, communication networks, and capital flows, but also went deeper into individual mental fluctuation residues, biological information distortions after contact with specific energies or technologies, and even subtle information anchors left in the Dark Plane that were similar to the HYDRA core's "thought stamp."
In just a few minutes, the holographic Earth on the main screen was marked with hundreds of red light points of varying shades.
Some were gathered in secret research institutions or disguised enterprises in the core of cities, some were lurking in armed camps in remote areas, and some had even infiltrated non-critical departments of certain national governments or international organizations.
Beside the light points, brief information was displayed in real-time: estimated number of personnel, level of weaponry, potential threat level, degree of association with known HYDRA branches, and so on.
"A total of 127 high-correlation target strongholds and 415 medium-to-low correlation suspected targets have been identified."
"There are 2,341 core active members, and the number of peripheral supporters and coerced personnel is unknown, but it is estimated to exceed 20,000."
Minerva reported the results calmly, "The targets are distributed globally, but are relatively concentrated in parts of Eastern Europe, South America, Southeast Asia, and Africa."
"Traces of some targets having had brief cooperation with early Chitauri wreckage technology, Extremis research, and... a small amount with 'A.I.M.' have been detected."
"Whoa, that's quite a lot."
Tony looked at the dense red dots and whistled, "It seems the Captain and Fury's'spring cleaning' left quite a few blind spots."
"But, how do you plan to handle this data? Just dump it on that old fox Fury? He's not as easy to order around as before, and the authority of S.W.O.R.D. is not quite the same as it was during the S.H.I.E.L.D. era."
Artoria pondered slightly.
Directly making it public on a large scale or using excessive power for physical removal was obviously not in line with her principle of "not easily interfering with the internal processes of a civilization," and it would easily trigger unnecessary panic and international disputes.
Handing it over to existing official or quasi-official organizations was a relatively safe choice.
But as Tony said, S.H.I.E.L.D. had become S.W.O.R.D., and Nick Fury's position and available resources also needed to be considered.
"Package the data and apply multi-layer encryption."
"Use the highest level of asymmetric encryption algorithms currently available on Earth for the outer layer, and add a logic lock based on Dark Plane information disturbance for the inner layer to ensure that only a specific 'key' can safely unlock it, and to prevent it from being hijacked or copied by third parties during transmission and decryption."
Artoria instructed Minerva, "Then, send it through an absolutely secure anonymous channel to the private communication terminal with the highest security level currently used by Nick Fury."
"For the postscript, just write... 'A late list of household chores, no need to thank me."
"From: A neighbor who doesn't want to see cockroaches.'"
Tony couldn't help but laugh out loud, "'A neighbor who doesn't want to see cockroaches'? Haha, that's a good name! Fury's expression when he sees it will definitely be wonderful."
"But, are you sure he can handle it? Some of the guys in these strongholds have strong firepower and are hidden very deep."
"The data will include detailed structural diagrams, personnel distribution, armory locations, communication nodes, and possible secret escape routes for each stronghold."
Artoria said calmly, "With Fury's methods, plus the Captain and S.W.O.R.D., if they still can't clean it up, then it can only mean they should retire."
"We only provide the information; the specific actions should be left to the 'professionals'."
"This is an internal matter for Earth, and we should not overstep our authority."
"That makes sense."
Tony nodded in agreement.
He understood Artoria's concerns and also appreciated this restraint.
The more powerful one is, the more one needs a clear sense of boundaries.
Just then, Minerva's operations paused slightly, her delicate eyebrows furrowed almost imperceptibly, but soon smoothed out again.
"Ling," she whispered, "during the deep information screening process, in accordance with the warning parameters you mentioned earlier regarding the potential infiltration of'shapeshifting races,' I have added an additional scan for anomalous aggregation of genetic information in the Earth's biological population, as well as logical contradictions between individual mental fluctuations and physiological characteristics."
Artoria's gaze immediately became sharp: "Any findings?"
Tony also sat up straight, his expression serious. He had heard rumors of the Skrulls; although the'Secret Invasion' crisis had been thwarted by the joint efforts of Captain Marvel and Fury, no one knew if there were still any stragglers lurking about.
Minerva shook her head: "No signs of typical'Skrull' genetic camouflage characteristics or large-scale, organized replacements have been detected. The aggregation of Earth's biological gene pool information is normal, and no large-scale anomalies exceeding natural mutation or known superpower influence ranges have been detected. At the individual level, there are a very small number of cases where mental and physiological characteristics are uncoordinated, but after auxiliary retrospective analysis by the chronos core, most can be attributed to acquired trauma, special experiments, or physical and mental imbalances caused by low-level superpower awakening. No systematic, conscious camouflage replacement patterns have been found."
She paused, then added: "However, 73 individuals have been detected globally whose 'identity information is blurred' or'social existence traces are contradictory,' which cannot be perfectly explained by existing Earth technology or known supernatural phenomena. Their common characteristic is that after a certain point in time, their behavioral patterns, knowledge structures, and interpersonal relationship networks underwent sudden changes, yet their physiological characteristics remained consistent, with no signs of being replaced. Possibilities include: time travelers, accidental arrivals from parallel Universes, victims of high-intensity memory modification or personality overwriting, or... extremely sophisticated camouflage forms that we do not yet fully understand. Do you need further investigation?"
Artoria pondered for a moment and waved her hand: "Not for now. They are few in number, scattered, and show no obvious organization or threat. Rashly conducting deep investigations could easily trigger unnecessary panic and social unrest. Just mark these anomalous data separately and set them to low-priority background monitoring. Our primary goal is to clean up known, organized threats. As for these 'fuzzy points'... as long as they behave themselves and don't cause trouble, we can observe them for the time being."
She breathed a sigh of relief. Finding no large-scale Skrull infiltration was good news. Otherwise, conducting a precise, nationwide identity verification would not only be a massive undertaking but also extremely likely to trigger a crisis of trust and social fragmentation, which would be the real trouble.
"Then," Artoria took one last look at the red dots of HYDRA marked on the main screen, confirming that the information packaging and encryption process was complete, "send the 'Cleanup List' to Nick Fury. After sending, erase all traces of our active operations on our side, keeping only the raw scan data backup, and store it in the Hyperion's top-secret archive."
"Command executed. Encrypted data packet generated... Anonymous channel established... Sent successfully. Operational traces cleared. Data backup archived." Minerva reported smoothly.
A 'chronic disease' that might have plagued Earth's security agencies for a long time was, within this warship hovering in the night sky, understatedly located, packaged, and sent out. The efficiency and secrecy of the methods left even Tony, a tech giant, in awe.
"Alright, that's one 'house chore' taken care of." Artoria stood up, stretched her somewhat stiff neck, and cast her gaze toward the familiar Villa outside the porthole, "Now, it's time to go back to the real 'home' and take a look. It's been so long since I've been back, Little Ai Classmate must be getting impatient."
Tony also stood up with a smile: "Do you need me to take you there? Or is your 'big baby' planning to land directly in your backyard? I bet Pepper and Morgan would love to see you, especially Morgan; she has always been curious about you, the 'Auntie Ling who can do magic'."
Thinking of Tony's wife and daughter, warmth also filled Artoria's eyes. "It's too late today, and I've just returned; the warship also needs to be settled. Let's make it tomorrow; tomorrow Minerva and I will pay a formal visit. Give my regards to Pepper and Morgan." She looked at the Villa outside the window, "As for the hyperion... it will stay here for now. Activate permanent optical camouflage, full-frequency information concealment, and passive defensive force fields. Unless attacked directly or summoned by me, it will remain in absolute silence, blending into the background of this bay."
"Understood. Initiating 'Homing' protocol. Coordinates locked, berth stabilized. Defensive systems: 'Wall of Silence' force field deployed, optical camouflage and information concealment running at full power. Warship entering low-power standby mode, maintaining core soul link with star dome and the Captain." The shipboard AI's soft voice sounded.
The massive silver-gray warship began to undergo subtle changes. The optical camouflage effect on its surface was further enhanced, perfectly merging with the light and shadows of the night sky and the sea. Even if someone looked directly at this location with a telescope, they would only see a normal night sky with slight water vapor reflections. All energy fluctuations and information radiation it emitted were absorbed, neutralized, and disguised by a layer of invisible, high-dimensional logical disturbance force fields. Even the most advanced detection equipment on Earth could not detect its existence. It was like a perfect "invisible bubble" that blended into the background, quietly hovering above the Villa.
"Then let's go." Artoria nodded to Minerva and looked at Tony, "Are you still flying back in your suit? Or... should I have the shadow shuttle take you?"
"Forget it, it's just a short distance, I'll just fly back myself. It's good to catch some breeze, clear my head, and digest tonight's 'information feast'." Tony waved his hand, and the Mark 50 armor quickly covered his whole body, "See you tomorrow, kid. And Minerva. Welcome home."
The thrusters of the gold-red armor lit up. Tony waved at them, turned, and flew out through the emergency exit that opened on the side of the bridge, soon turning into a stream of light and disappearing in the direction of Manhattan.
Artoria and Minerva smiled at each other and walked hand in hand toward the internal teleportation platform on the other side of the bridge. With a flash of light, their figures disappeared from the massive Hyperion.
The next moment, they were already standing in the living room of the Villa in Long Island Bay, which they had been away from for more than five years.
The living room was brightly lit and as warm as ever. The air was fresh, carrying a faint floral scent. Everything was almost unchanged from when she left, only tidier, as if time had frozen here. The only difference was that in the holographic projection area in the center of the living room, a Q-version cartoon little maid image made of soft light was "standing" there, with her hands "clasped" in front of her, her electronic eyes "staring" unblinkingly at the two people who had suddenly appeared.
It was Little Ai Classmate. Its image was more vivid and detailed than when Artoria left, and its expressions seemed richer.
After a brief, system-crash-like silence.
Little Ai Classmate's cartoon image "shook" violently, and "tears" seemed to flicker in its pixelated eyes. It used a voice that was trembling with an obvious electronic synthesized tone, yet trying hard to imitate excited emotions, and stuttered as it "shouted":
"Mas-Mas-Master?! Miss Minerva?! Is-is it you?! System detected biological characteristics matching the highest authority! Logic check passed! This is not a drill! Master! You're finally back!!!"
Along with its "excited" voice, all the lights in the Villa flickered happily, soft music played automatically, the air conditioning wind speed was adjusted to the most comfortable level, and even the humming of the coffee machine starting automatically came from the kitchen.
"Xiao Ai, we're back." Artoria stepped forward, reached out, and gently stroked Little Ai Classmate's holographic image, a truly relaxed and warm smile appearing on her face, "Thank you for holding down the fort these past few years."
"It wasn't hard! It wasn't hard!" Little Ai Classmate "shook its head" repeatedly, and the cartoon image spun around in the air a few times, "Little Ai Classmate is so happy to see Master again! Mr. Stark and Miss Friday helped me upgrade a lot! I'm very capable now! I can manage the whole Villa and play chess online with Miss Friday! Although I always lose... Master, are you going to leave again this time?"
Looking at this artificial intelligence that she had given "life" to, which had been constantly learning and growing during the long wait, a complex tenderness surged in Artoria's heart. She answered softly but firmly:
"For now, we're not leaving."
"This is also our home."
Outside the window, the night was gentle, and the bay was calm. In the night sky, that massive warship, carrying the glory and knowledge of another Universe, acted like the most loyal guardian, silently protecting this hard-won peace.
The homeward-bound travelers finally shed their weariness and returned to their own harbor.
A new story will continue to be written under this familiar starry sky.
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