Chapter 47: All the time in the world

***An hour later 

Emily rubbed her eyes as she walked up to the door. She opened it to find a few home security guards surrounding a young man in his early 20s. 

"Do you even know what time it is?" Emily asked in frustration. 

"Of course. Now, where is she? By the way, do you mind if I use the garage?" Kar-el patted the slab covered in a blue tent. 

"No, what the hell is even that?" Emily shook her head before waving her hand, "Someone, remove the cover. " 

One of the guards quickly nodded and tried to remove the cover but Kar-el blocked him. 

"Wait wait wait. Let's not do that." He raised his eyebrows as a show of aggression at the guard before turning to Emily. 

"Okay, look. Just tell her to come here. It's urgent and very important. " Kar-el slowly tried to convey his request.

"How urgent? Urgent enough to show up unannounced at 3 in the morning with an unidentified device?" Emily frowned as she chided Kar-el but then Serena finally showed up. 

"Shouldn't you be somewhere else right now?" Serena asked Kar-el. 

"Yeah, I can explain." Kar-el quickly lifted the covered slab and walked inside. The guards tried to interfere but Serena just waved her hand and dismissed them. 

"Take two lefts and then straight." Serena remarked as she followed Kar-el. 

Emily also tried to follow them but Serena told her to sleep instead. 

"So, what took you so long?" Kar-el asked her once the garage door began to open. 

"I was doing something. Took some time to arrive after Orphina told me." Serena curtly replied. 

"What's this by the way?" Serena tilted her head cutely with her finger on her chin. 

"Ohh, you're gonna love it." Kar-el proudly smiled before removing the cover from the Ice slab. 

"This..." Serena walked beside him admiring the ice cube with Icarus frozen inside. 

"Handsome sure, but he's not my type. Plus, detached arms are a big no-no for me." Serena shrugged. 

Kar-el didn't reply and instead started to melt the ice using his heat vision and stopped halfway. 

"I didn't know that today was Valentine's day." Serena's eyes widened. 

"Such a piece of art." Serena picked up one of the hands and slowly turned it, "I can't wait to apply all these techniques on this shell and upgrade it."

"Indeed. How much time do you think it will take us to study him completely? " Kar-el asked as he leaned on Icarus half trapped in ice. 

"Probably around a month if we are just talking about his physical body. Inner mechanics would take another month because it seems he is alive though a bit damaged. "She frowned a bit there before continuing, "Given that you kept him alive, you must want his personality to remain as well, so I would need to be careful while studying his inner mechanism, this will make it take more time than necessary." 

"And then the energy source that he is using to operate is completely unknown to me, so give or take it… It should take around 2 months on that. I need to run so many tests on him." Serena then squealed, "But after that, there would be so many things I could do with this! Oh, I can't wait to open him up." 

"Yeah that... We don't have that much time." Kar-el hesitantly backed away from her reach and he was right to do that. 

"YOU WHAT!!!!" Serena screamed in anger before turning her palm at him and firing a concentrated energy blast at his chest.

"Holy~", Kar-el widened his eyes and smoothly evaded. 

"Crazy girl" Kar-el looked at the car that got stuck by the blast. 

"You crazy, your mom crazy!!", Serena screamed in outrage. 

"No need to go all tsundere on me."Kar-el screamed back.

Both stared at each other silently before Kar-el asked, "Peace?" to which Serena nodded.

"Orphina, make sure no one comes here after hearing the blast," Serena ordered to the camera. 

"On it," Orphina replied. 

"As soon as he wakes up, he might try to contact others of his kind or he might just blow himself up," Kar-el told Serena about how he encountered Icarus. 

"So you need to go back?" Serena asked once she listened to all that. 

Kar-el just nodded. 

"Look, I can't keep him in a coma without damaging his persona and memories in such a short time." Serena gave her judgment. 

"What if you have all the time in the world?" The Ancient One walked out of a portal just then. 

"Right now I am more interested in how you could so easily create a warp gate between two destinations in space," Serena replied while narrowing her eyes. 

"I was expecting you," Kar-el remarked as he welcomed her. 

"One of my hobbies is studying cosmic artifacts and this one here is a living breathing piece of celestial creation that I was eyeing for quite some time, alas I never had the opportunity to study it before." The Ancient One explained. 

"I have dealt with cosmic energy before, I could prove to be a great asset in your research as well." She proposed to Serena. 

"I am quite thankful for your help before. I will keep this debt in mind and will surely repay you when you need it the most." Kar-el sincerely said. 

"That was no big deal. Just let me study him beside you and we can call it even." The Ancient One politely smiled.

Serena chose to remain quiet as she looked at them both. 

"That and this are both different things."Kar-el shook his head," You are free to join us as long as you like but I must warn you to prepare yourself. You might not get the results that you are hoping to get here. The hold of the dark dimension on your soul is too thick, you can't purify it with cosmic energy with the time you have left." 

The Ancient One paused and turned to look at his eyes in wonder before choosing to remain quiet and Kar-el seriously nodded at her. 

"Why do I feel like you both are saying a lot to each other just by looking at one another ?" Serena asked suspiciously. 

"With time, you will get your answers, miss." The Ancient One chose to avoid answering by speaking like a visionary. 

"What? Are you jealous or something?" Kar-el asked with a teasing smile. 

"Ohh please." Serena scoffed before clapping her palms, " So are we doing it or not?" as she looked at them. 

"I can start creating the spell that would provide you with as much time as you desire for our research as soon as both of you are ready, but I have no solution on how to stop him from waking up" Ancient one replied. 

"How about separating his astral projection from his body and binding it while we operate?", Kar-el hopefully asked. 

"Not possible. His astral projection is heavily linked to cosmic energy which makes it impossible to separate the two forcefully without any consequences." She shook her head. "Similar to you both in fact." She added which caused Kar-el to raise an eyebrow. 

"Astral what?" Serena asked," Half of the things you are saying makes no sense to me. It's like I'm a student listening to my lectures during those college events I have to attend once a year." 

"Do you know you sound like an arrogant prick sometimes?" Kar-el asked. 

"Learned from the very best of course." Serena mockingly replied. 

"Is that how you talk to your creator?" 

"Is that how you talk to your biggest achievement?" 

"cough cough" The Ancient One smiled while both of them blushed. 

"Actually, I think I might have a solution to the current problem. I just need to grab something from my apartment." Kar-el said. 

He was about to fly but The Ancient One opened a portal to his apartment first. 

"You know, one of these days you have to show me how to do things like that," Kar-el muttered while walking inside the portal. 

"Yeah, me too," Serena added intrigued. 

"Kamar Taj is always ready to provide knowledge to those that come to it looking for knowledge." The Ancient One replied. 

Before long Kar-el returned with a scythe and The Ancient One closed the portal. 

"Which antique store did you find this? What the hell is this trash?" Serena frowned seeing him bring a cold weapon with him.

Before Kar-el could even reply, The Ancient One interfered. 

"Something so mysterious that it makes celestial creation appear like a simple roadside rock in comparison. I don't even dare to study it lest it attracts the gaze of someone truly beyond my understanding." She looked at Kar-el lifting the weapon with ease. 

"It appears you had quite a gain in Wakanda. " She meaningfully remarked to which Kar-el smiled back. 

"Okay, let me try." Both of them stepped back a bit to give Kar-el a direct view of Icarus. 

He took a deep breath while closing his eyes. When he opened them again, they were glowing blue. 

Serena and The Ancient One felt that they were insignificant at the moment. An unknown pressure took hold of them as they looked at Kar-el right now. Kar-el gave them the feeling of starting directly at death itself as he stood holding the scythe in his hand. 

They both felt an unknown desire born inside them that nudged them to kneel before the entity before them. It was then that the time stone chose to announce its presence. 

***Kar-el P.O.V.

I was but blind until now it seems. Right now an entirely new world opened in front of me as I hold the scythe in my hands. 

Everywhere I look, I could see threads originating from beings and objects that traveled to unknown places. Yet I somehow know exactly what they are just by looking at them. 

Threads of the essence. 

Threads that represent a being's fate, significance, and potential. There were two types of threads that I could see. One that stays inside oneself, traveling like blood vessels. 

Second were those that travel to unknown areas. 

It was pretty hard to focus on a single individual's threads of the essence with everyone's threads mixing into each other. 

So I tried to focus on just Icarus and suddenly there were just us two inside a void of sorts. 

I walked up to him and my curiosity got better of me as I doubled down on focusing on one of the threads that were traveling into some unknown place. 

I suddenly felt a change in space and found myself looking at Ajak who was feeding horses on her farm. She didn't seem to realize that she was being observed, I looked at her for some time before severing the connection.

This time I chose a different thread that sent me to the streets of London. I saw Sprite looking all depressed lost in her thoughts while sitting inside a traveling bus. 

I returned and noticed that there was a threat that was bigger than the rest and it also traveled much further in the unknown than the rest. I chose to look at where it goes and who it was connected to. 

Halfway through the route, the scythe gave me a vision telling me who this thread belonged to.

Arishem. 

I also had the premonition that I am not capable enough to observe him without him noticing the intrusion so I quickly severed the connection. 

I finally focused on what I was trying to do and looked at Icarus. He looked like a transparent hologram instead of what he looked like in the physical world. Almost like I was looking at his astral projection but the only difference was that I could see lots of threads traveling in his body from head to toe. 

There was a tennis ball-sized golden sphere in the middle of his chest from which many golden threads originate and traveled in his body. From his head, many grey-colored threads originate that traveled to every part of his body. 

I focused on a group of golden threads that traveled to his head and raised my scythe before embedding it in the middle of that group. Once the scythe blocked the way for the thread to travel to his head, every thread originating from his brain lost its luster and stopped glowing. I left the scythe on his chest and slowly willed to return to the physical world. 

I didn't directly return to the physical world, instead, I returned in stages. First, the void disappeared in which only Icarus and I were present and we returned to space where everyone was visible with all of their threads intermixed into each other. 

I was quick to notice the glaring presence that time stone was producing. I could almost feel the emotions that it was displaying. There was mild hostility and caution towards me and a growing sense of curiosity. 

'It appears I am not the only universal entity with consciousness. I wonder if I could communicate with it in some form.' I thought as I finally returned to the physical world and realized that I was standing in the same place I was standing when I entered that world. The only difference being the scythe was not in my hands but embedded in Icarus's upper chest. 

"Are you okay?" Once Serena spoke while supporting The Ancient One I finally noticed that she was breathing heavily and sweating buckets. 

"I'm fine. This is a normal reaction when encountering the presence of two universal entities. Plus, I was hosting one of the entities in my chest when it happened. I will be fine in a few minutes." The Ancient One reassured her before glancing at the scythe embedded inside Icarus. 

"It seems you have succeeded." 

"Indeed, just don't take it out of his chest and he will remain in an artificial coma." Kar-el nodded. 

"I don't think there is anyone that could remove it except you." The Ancient One muttered. 

"You might not but she could." Kar-el glanced at Serena at the end," Her soul is a proxy to my own, she does possess the ability though it depends on whether she could utilize that ability right now." 

"I need to go now. I leave it to you two to transfer him to the lab. We shall start working on it once I return. I don't think the prime eternal Ajak would realize that her scout has gone missing for a few days." Kar-el remarked before excusing himself. 

The Ancient one tried to open a portal for him but Kar-el declined the offer given that she still looked quite tired.

Edited by GrimHræzlyr

Proof-read by AzuraD