Disclaimer - I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or its Intellectual Property. This is all just so that I can take my maladaptive daydreaming and turn it into something so that it does not ruin the rest of my day.
DoorMan #4
Colin's Apartment, Seattle[January 9, 2008]
–Colin Baxter–
Ah, how time passes. It was only a week ago that he was with his brethren, in the center of the Convention, passing the time, ogling cosplaying chicks, and eating his body weight in calories, and now? Now, he was stuck studying for this exam that he didn't even wish to take.
"Ah, is it so hard to make updated textbooks? What do they even charge this much money for?" He grumbled to himself as he read through the horribly outdated textbooks assigned to them by their professor. He was studying to become a computer science engineer and was well ahead of the world in terms of software development of all kinds and yet, he had to learn some outdated principles about COBOL of all languages to get good grades for this exam.
His scholarship was very generous, paying for everything related to College, and yet, it needed a 3.0 GPA throughout his education.
Now that was not that hard to achieve IF one could attend all the other tests. No, between his work as a paid freelancer, volunteer open source developer, self employed Power testing and Kamar Taj affiliated Sorcerer, he had no time for classes as well as the little tests and quizzes that usually happen throughout the duration of a normal semester.
Normally, there would be no other option for a student. They would either have to do everything in college or have to do their other tasks but since he was, well, he, who was a legend in the Nerd community, the college was willing to look the other way as long as he didn't lose his scholarship and performed well.
Hence, the studying, since this was the biggest test of the semester, carried most of the weightage and only if he scored 95% or above on this test, he could maintain his 3.0 GPA average and keep his scholarship.
"Ah, I could be doing something so much more interesting," He muttered to himself, rotating his chair to take in his second best bachelor pad and found himself loathing the study material. Well, if they had the creativity to make it any interesting, he would have taken more than a cursory look, rather than just spend all his time daydreaming.
To be honest, it was not even that hard for him, courtesy of his enhanced brain but even that initial screening, the initial focused reading that would just imprint the book into his memory felt so tedious, he gave up mid way multiple times.
Looking up at the ceiling, he thought of the next steps he could take. So far, he was very heavily restricted by both Wong and the Ancient One in any steps he could take, based on his meta knowledge. Only now that he was in college, and lived on his own, could he do something about all the terrifying knowledge filled in his head.
Good news was that this was the cookie-cutter MCU with no meaningful deviation, well, aside from any new ones that he would do himself with his powers. Over the years, he tried to research, and devise strategies but even with his big head, he couldn't find a way he could upend the whole timeline and come out with a net positive.
Hell, aside from the whole Thanos Snap plan, he could save more human lives if he simply cleansed the whole planet, something that might very well be in the realm of possibility if he took on the Green Dimension DOor and cranked it up to the max.
It was as if the MCU he remembered happening was close to the best possible version of events happening, leading to half the universe dying and then being resurrected after half a decade.
That was something he could not accept, no matter what. Everything else was fair game, maybe even the Chitauri Invasion, if he found a better alternative to exposing the whole Alien life thing to the world, otherwise Loki would get the opportunity to open the portal and then watch as all of his plans crumbled as the Invasion was repelled pretty smoothly.
He chuckled at the image of him repelling an entire alien invasion, all by himself.
"Nice fantasies, Colin. Very nice fantasies," He chuckled to himself as he refocused on the 43rd page of the last textbook he had to memorise before the paper tomorrow. All of those things required power, a significant amount of power. He didn't have that level of power, just yet and he might never.
As things were going, he might end up becoming the strongest non Infinity, Gamma, or Chaos powered human around but as he knew from his knowledge, even having Infinity granted power was not enough to stop bad things from happening.
No, going by the power route was clearly not the smart choice, that much his brain could tell him. No, the bigger impact he could create was by nudging a few things here and there, small acts that would cascade into bigger avalanches of change, at least with his current power level.
He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs before focusing on the book. Just another 200 pages before he was done and perfect scores for tomorrow's exam was all but guaranteed. He wouldn't want Old Man Wong breathing down his neck because his grades slipped, even a little bit.
As things went, Wong might actually try to pull him back into Kamar Taj, with the justification of falling grades, further impeding his movements. So, this fight with the exam was not just for his scholarship because he was more than capable of financing that with his own hard earned money, no, this was the fight for his freedom. Freedom from balding Old Men who still thought of him as the soaking wet 12-13 year old who showed up on their doorsteps.
"Ah, good times," He flipped the textbook shut, suddenly not in the mood as he pushed his chair back with a well timed door on his foot that released a small wave of pressurised air.
The Wind dimension was handy like that. Also, it was one of the more useful ones because the water dimension could not be pressurised according to his will but the wind Dimension could release pressurised winds on command.
The composition of the air was remarkably similar to Earth's atmosphere as well so he didn't have to worry about polluting Earth's atmosphere with the repetitive usage of his powers.
He had a theory that there were different tiers to dimensions as well, something that he was working on integrating into the search UI he had already built into his powers. According to his theory, the Wind DImension and the Kinetic laser dimensions were a cut above the rest of the dimensions.
The CHI dimension should be the one above all of them, such was its impact on him. The Light Dimension, the Water Dimension, and the Earth dimension were not that useful to him and also could not be manipulated by him, hence the lower rating.
Now, if he had found some Holy Light dimension, that would have obviously been A tier. Even that would not be S iter in his opinion because nothing beats the ability to perform mass healing, mass passive strengthening on a group of people simply by opening a door and letting them bask in the glow of CHI.
Hell, according to the Ancient One, his blood would be like poison to Vampires, the strong life force within his blood attracting the Vampires but the weaker ones would not be able to handle the sheer energy within them, exploding on overeating.
Only Dracula might be able to drink his blood and not get energy bloated, which was terrifying because Vlad Dracula was a strong motherf*cker and not someone to be tangled with, even at the best of times.
He perked up as an idea popped into his head.
Turning around after firing yet another mild shockwave from his feet, he reached the other end of his sweet sweet bachelor pad, touching his main workstation, which held the state of the art PC that he built with his own blood, sweat, and tears.
Okay, a little dramatic but he did buy the overkill, overpriced monstrosity with his first hard earned money. Some of the hardware, like the case and the GPU were hideously overpriced but Anime for the win, especially Anime Waifu themed hardware that was collector edition, and priced at twice the MSRP.
The most demanding thing he did on this computer was Figma, which was what he used to design the whole UI in his mind, and also to sometimes design something for his freelancer regular clients that deserved the custom pieces he built for them sometimes.
So far, he counted two different hit Social Media apps and one Blog website that collectively generated over 12 Billion Dollars in yearly revenue, all paid out to him in royalties.
As one could imagine, he was rich, filthy rich, and yet, one might wonder, why did he still get a full scholarship?
Well, one, he applied before he became a millionaire, an official one anyway, and second, it was a Stark Industries Scholarship, granted to emerging talents, irrespective of monetary requirements.
A truly odd scholarship but who was he to say no to Free Money?
All he had to do in return was do a summer internship with Stark Industries in their LA offices this upcoming summer.
That would be great, obviously, since their founder was going to be kidnapped by a bunch of terrorists in a couple of months before building something that would reshape global military tactics for years to come, rendering all current gen weaponry nearly useless.
"Ah, that's the stuff," he sighed as he gulped down a concentrated shot of coffee as he worked on getting the design right for his new UI update so that he could go back to memorising his textbook.
Ah, the wonders of Procrastination.
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