"Exams, exams, exams." Without any spirit, she lay on Tohka's shoulder, mumbling those words over and over.
Miku Izayoi just felt a wave of darkness before her eyes—she'd been busy with her own affairs lately. As for books, she hadn't touched them in a long time. Besides, even if she did, so what? She really didn't think she could learn anything.
"Hey hey, are you okay?" Seeing the soulless Miku Izayoi in front of her, Tohka quickly shook her, trying to snap her out of it.
At this moment, she could pretty much guess that this girl had never been good at studying. Now, with a placement exam looming, Tohka herself might be fine, but Miku was definitely overwhelmed.
"Right, Tony's armor—wait, no, that only works for me." Tohka originally thought of handing Tony's armor to Miku Izayoi to help her out, but then she suddenly remembered that no one except herself could use that armor.
"No way, your method is way too flashy. Wait, I think I can control the teacher." At that moment, Miku Izayoi suddenly stood up from Tohka's embrace, then spoke with some excitement.
"You... you're even more outrageous than me." Tohka had at least been thinking of doing things sneakily, but this girl was going to be bold about it.
Still, Tohka had nothing more to say—after all, it wasn't a bad plan. But she still couldn't help but remind her: "Hey hey, you have to be careful. Don't let anyone find out. Otherwise, it might become a stain on your record, and that'll be a big problem for us."
On this point, Tohka wasn't lying—here, cheating was considered a very serious matter. If you got caught, it would likely be written into your file and follow you for life.
"Don't worry. Something this small won't get found out. I'll give a suggestion to the entire school. As long as you don't jump out and expose it, nothing will happen." Hearing Tohka's concern, Miku Izayoi patted her own ample chest and promised with confidence.
"Well, fine then." Tohka was completely indifferent to it. Honestly, you can't expect these spirits to be law-abiding citizens. As long as they weren't destroying things, it was already something to be thankful for. Besides, this school was under S.H.I.E.L.D., and Nick Fury wouldn't bother holding them accountable for this sort of thing.
So, the two of them settled on this plan, and that was that.
When school was out in the afternoon, Tohka and Miku Izayoi left together.
"How'd you do on the test? Did you really suggest to the whole school to subconsciously ignore you? Isn't that a bit too much?" As soon as she saw Miku Izayoi, Tohka brought up what happened today. This girl really was over-the-top. Although she didn't directly control anyone, it still caused quite a stir—but thankfully, no one noticed.
"Tch, weren't you doing the same?" Hearing Tohka's comment, Miku Izayoi rolled her eyes. "I even checked the control room. All the surveillance cameras were down. Tell me, was that your doing?"
"Uh, hahaha, don't mind those trivial details." Hearing Miku Izayoi's words, Tohka laughed awkwardly. She had to admit, the AI Tony gave her was really handy. Although it didn't have the computing power of JARVIS, it was enough for her to do things without involving him.
After all, JARVIS was Tony's butler. So, she simply let her AI offload part of JARVIS's computation, hacked into the school's surveillance system, and shut it all down. Even though the school was affiliated with S.H.I.E.L.D., they couldn't afford to station much force here, so with some time, she managed to gain access.
On the other side, Nick Fury also noticed something abnormal at the school. It only took him a moment to figure out what had probably happened. Of course, he chose to ignore it.
As long as those two didn't cause any major trouble, he couldn't be bothered. He had far too many other things to deal with. That said, it didn't stop him from cursing Tony out behind his back—he was sure those two were acting under Tony's influence.
"All right, how's Coulson's prep going?" At this moment, Nick Fury wasn't on the airborne helicarrier but was standing with Coulson at a base.
He hadn't even bothered to document the issue with Tohka. Right now, the two of them were staring at a glowing blue cube in front of them.
The whole base was under an extremely tense atmosphere. That was because the Tesseract was becoming more and more unstable. Although it wasn't dangerous yet, if mishandled, it could become a disaster.
"It's releasing gamma radiation, but at very low levels—no significant harm to humans…"
At that moment, before Coulson could respond, Dr. Selvig answered the question first. Even though Coulson was present, he was just an agent. The one truly in charge of the project's operation and research was the doctor in front of them—so his opinion carried the most weight here.
"It still is harmful, though." Nick Fury grumbled a bit but didn't pursue the point.
Instead, he fixed his eyes on the Tesseract in front of them—it was their top priority. But now, it was becoming increasingly unstable, and the surrounding instruments were working desperately to suppress it.
"Why suppress it? Our goal is to extract cosmic energy from it to make weapons. Wouldn't this actually help?" Looking at the cube, Nick Fury turned and asked Dr. Selvig. After all, that was the whole point.
"This is different." Without lifting his head from the screen, Dr. Selvig replied as he continued typing on his computer, unclear what he was doing. "I haven't completed the calculations. If anything unexpected happens, we might face a huge mess. No one will know what could happen. However..."
Before he could finish his sentence, the Tesseract suddenly emitted a massive burst of energy. That immediately made him stop his actions and rush to Fury's side to look at the cube.
A huge surge of energy struck the platform in front of them, and when the energy dissipated, a man wielding a staff appeared kneeling on one knee.
In an instant, the atmosphere turned tense, and all the guards raised their weapons, aiming them at him.