Claiming Wakanda was one thing. Shaping it into my territory—my personal dominion, my personal empire of science—was something entirely different.
A few hours after the city had fallen and the screams had quieted into the dull background noise of subjugation, I stood on the highest balcony of the royal palace. My palace now. The golden architecture of Wakanda gleamed beneath the African sun, but all I saw was potential. Endless potential. Vibranium veins that stretched for kilometers. Heart-Shaped Herb vaults waiting to be dissected. The dormant power of a nation that had spent centuries hiding from the world—now bowing beneath my heel.
I breathed in the metallic tang of the air, the smell of burnt vibranium plating from the battle still drifting lazily upward. My Red Hand troopers patrolled the streets like silent shadows, their augmented bodies moving with absolute precision. D-Class transports rumbled through the city, carrying off the now-subdued population. The rest of Wakanda's elite—scientists, engineers, innovators—were already being escorted to orientation chambers where brainwashing rigs waited.
Their minds would belong to me within the day.
Wakanda wasn't going to be a country anymore.
It was going to be a lab.
My lab.
A sanctuary of impossible science. A place where physics didn't merely break—they shattered and then reassembled themselves into something far superior.
Because I was no longer bound by what normal science could do.
I had become something far beyond that.
As I stood there, I let my hand fall to the device clipped to my coat—Rick Prime's Multiversal Molecular Compiler. The masterpiece of a man who, in another timeline, had been feared as the smallest, coldest devil in the multiverse. A normal Rick could create new suns and hop universes like stepping stones. But Rick Prime? His devices could tweak the foundational constants of reality. Shift the vibrations of the multiverse like notes in a song. Turn theoretical physics into children's toys.
And I had obtained one of his inventions.
Not stolen.
Obtained.
After all, you don't "steal" from Rick Prime. You earn his interest—and then you survive it.
The Compiler hummed at my hip like a living engine. With it, I could break down matter, rewrite atomic structure, create new technologies, alter gravity, generate antimatter without annihilating the continent, forge star-core alloys… all at the push of a button. Combined with my ability to manipulate every element on the periodic table, I was no longer just creating materials.
I was creating possibilities.
That was why Wakanda was mine now.
I needed a place where nothing would hold me back.
No Council.
No laws.
No oversight.
Just me, my science, and the endless rage-fueled creativity of someone who wanted to take apart the universe and build it better.
Orochimaru slithered up beside me, his eyes gleaming with reptilian hunger as he surveyed the city below.
"It is… beautiful," he said with a grin. "So many test subjects. So much potential for biological evolution. You've truly outdone yourself."
"Of course I have," I replied simply. "This is only the start. Wakanda will be my crucible. A world-class lab that transcends Earth. A place where we create weapons that reshape history… where we build machines that ignore the laws of causality… where new realities are born."
Orochimaru shuddered in excitement.
Jack Bright walked up behind us, still dragging a corpse that he hadn't quite gotten around to discarding yet. "You know," he said casually, "this place has nice weather. Great lighting. Good for experiments that require open space. Or explosions. Mostly explosions."
"We'll be doing plenty of those," I said. "But first things first: Wakanda needs to be restructured."
I snapped my fingers.
Sentinel—my AI, my digital war god—materialized on a nearby projector panel.
"All systems ready," Sentinel intoned. "Site Reformation Protocol awaits command input."
"Begin layout expansion," I ordered. "Tear down every non-essential structure. Convert the mines into multi-tier lab chambers. Create six research pyramids around the city center. Pull every vibranium cache to the main forge district. I want a hyper-reactor core built beneath the palace and a dimensional testing chamber connected to the portal array."
Sentinel processed the command instantly.
"Estimated completion time: twelve hours."
Orochimaru raised an eyebrow. "That fast?"
"It would be faster," Sentinel replied, "but the gravitational stabilizers you demanded must be calibrated carefully if you wish to avoid collapsing the capital into itself."
I shrugged. "Collateral damage builds character."
Jack chuckled. "Pretty sure it kills people."
"Only the ones too slow to learn."
The palace floor rumbled beneath us as dozens of vibranium construction machines—now under Sentinel's control—activated at once. Buildings began shifting, reconfiguring, breaking apart. Roads deepened into transit tunnels. Magnetic rails spiraled across the city like silver veins. Massive pylons rose into the sky, generating shimmering fields of multi-layered energy.
Wakanda was being rewritten.
Transformed.
Reborn.
And it was glorious.
I held out the Tesseract—the glowing blue cube I'd secretly taken from Odin's careless abandonment centuries ago. Its light spread across my fingers, humming in resonance with the Multiversal Compiler.
Space and reality bending in my hands.
Time trembling.
Possibility expanding.
"With this," I whispered, "and the tech I'm building here… we're going to make history irrelevant."
Orochimaru grinned. "And what will the O5 Council think when they discover you've built a super-lab without permission?"
"Oh, they'll complain. They'll argue. They'll threaten. But in the end?" I smiled. "They'll need me. And once they see what Wakanda becomes—what I make here—they won't be able to challenge me."
Jack Bright raised a hand. "Because you'll be too valuable?"
"Because," I answered, "I'll be too powerful."
Thunder rolled in the distance—not weather, but the electromagnetic shearing of a new energy grid coming online.
Wakanda trembled beneath my feet as my empire began to take shape.
My lab.
My kingdom.
My world.
And this was only the beginning.