Symbiote 0324: Apex City

With Alex hastening her recovery, it didn't take more than a few hours for Wanda to wake up from sleep.

She sat up in bed, letting the covers naturally slip off her body as she looked around the room.

"You've been busy while I slept," she said before falling back down again, resting her head on Alex's arm. "How long was I out?"

"Just a few hours," he told her. "Do you like the room?"

"I do," she nodded. "It just needs some personality … Also, a bit stuffy, don't you think? You didn't put in any windows."

"Thanks …"

"I'm not … criticizing you," she turned to him with a smile. "I'll just help you with some interior design stuff later."

"Why don't we move on to the next step of your plan?" Alex said. "The witches upstairs are all panicking because they just lost their main source of power."

"Let them go through a little panic," Wanda said as she kissed Alex's cheek before getting out of bed. "Their reliance on me will be all the more substantial once they lose their will to fight. Let's establish our city first."

As she stood up, Alex formed her usual red Scarlet Witch outfit with his black accents.

"To think you went from wanting to live in a recluse environment with no one to disturb us to wanting to establish your own witch city at the center of a planet …" Alex shook his head. "How did you even get that idea?"

"You see …" She looked at him with a cheeky smile. "When we do eventually have kids, they need a school and people of their age to play with. What better way to make a good environment for them than to build it from scratch?"

Looking into Wanda's eyes, Alex could tell that her decision was truly all based on that mundane thought process. She didn't care about the implications of establishing a city for people of magical inclination, nor did she plan to actually manage anything. All she wanted was to live a comfortable life with Alex.

The expression on her face that radiated a profound sense of naivety gave rise to a conviction within Alex. He moved close to her and hugged her tightly.

'I'll make sure that nothing ever dares to take away this smile from your face …'

As a meta entity with all sorts of information regarding the cosmos, he was too aware of the tragic fate that reality had in store for Wanda.

"If you continue radiating this sense of protectiveness, Alex … I don't think I'll have the will to resist my urges …" She spoke to him, weakly resting her hands on his back.

When he separated and looked at her blushing face and her eyes filled with arousal, Alex couldn't help but let a smile form on his face.

"Let's finish the city first," he smiled lovingly at her. "Since you've done so much for us, I naturally have to make it up to you with a special reward …"

"I love your rewards~" She got up on the tips of her toes and kissed his lips. "Make sure you don't disappoint me. I'm not letting you go for a while once we start."

Alex didn't respond as Wanda grabbed his hand and pulled him through the door.

"…" She paused. "This is the bathroom."

"Yes."

"Where is the balcony? And why did I sense that this was the balcony?"

"Because…" Alex held her shoulders and made her look at him. "I can't actually block your senses and decided that clouding them would be a better option."

"I'm suddenly reconsidering my thoughts of using your body as one of the materials for building this tower."

"Don't worry. I can't sense anything through the walls, either," he said. "Unless I change up the system a little. And I don't plan to do that. This is our home. We don't need to use any powers beyond conjuring things in here."

"Why don't I just make some modifications to my enchantments …" Wanda's eyes started glowing. "Ah!" She jumped in a panic, losing the glow as Alex spanked her.

"No magic inside the house. Now come. Let me show you around."

She pouted at him like an aggrieved child and crossed her arms as she turned around, only to widen her eyes in surprise.

"This is the bedroom that I had in mind," Alex said as Wanda stepped forward and saw the spacious bedroom with one wall made completely of glass, revealing the red-tinted void outside the tower. Exactly opposite that was their bed, facing the window. They were on the right side of the bed, exiting a small hallway with two doors on each side that presumably led to their closets, with the bathroom behind them. Opposite them was another door that led outside the bedroom.

"We can make changes to it later if you want. I couldn't quite figure out where to put the dresser …" Alex said.

"It's perfect, Alex," she turned to him with a smile. "Still needs my touch, though."

"The rest of it is all in your hands, my lady," he responded with a light bow.

"Come on," she shook her head at him and dragged him to the window. "I feel so tiny in this huge place …"

"Thousands of miles of the Earth's core … all hollowed out and replaced by a tiny little tower two miles in height and a couple hundred meters in radius. Another reason is that creating a city in this space will be a good thing. It will make things more lively. Not to mention giving you a very viable position of authority over all things magic in this universe."

"You have a lot of work cut out for you, Alex. And I'll reap all of their fruits," she said cheekily.

"You are going to be a figurehead at most," Alex said. "I'll be the one managing everything anyway."

"And that's exactly the kind of leader I want to be. You can puppet me around, and we can enjoy a normal, mundane life."

"Don't jinx it."

Wanda smiled at him. They both stepped through the window as if it were a membrane and floated in the air right in front of their bedroom.

"How much Vibranium and all those other special metals do you have available?" She asked.

"We have a few hundred metric tonnes of Vibranium and Adamantium combined, while Uru is much rarer; I only have what I managed to salvage from those three Mjolnirs."

"Good enough," Wanda nodded. "Let's see …" She closed her eyes as calm crimson energy escaped her body, melding with the misty Chaos energy that populated their surroundings. With her spell, the tower's exterior started glowing red as the countless complex runes activated, brightly illuminating the darkness of the empty void. Slowly, the bottom quarter of the tower started expanding into a disk shape as it spread around rapidly. More and more mass continued expanding out of it as an island formed in the middle of the void, with a tower at its center.

"Hmm … Maintaining sufficient integrity limits us to a space of around two hundred miles in radius …" Wanda said. "Any more, and we need more materials."

"It's more than enough for the time being, Wanda," Alex said as he looked at the rapidly expanding metallic island under him with a sense of fascination in his eyes. "Once some people move in, we can make this empty floating island look more like a city."

"Mhm …" She nodded, allowing the runes on the tower's surface to return to their dormant state as the tower stopped glowing. "What do you want to call it?"

"I don't know," he shrugged. "Apex City?"

"Whatever you say. Not like I'm going to involve myself in the administration," she said. "Now that all my work is done, do you mind showing me around the house?"

"Soon," Slex said. "First, I want to test the capabilities of our tower."

The runes that had just powered down started glowing once again as a massive amount of Chaos Energy was released from Alex's figure. Unlike Wanda, his energy had no traces of the Source of Chaos, only the simple, misty energy. But that was enough for his purposes.

"Thousands of units of Cosmic Energy went into the making of this tower. It's got to at least serve my purpose," Alex said with a suppressed grievance as he channeled his authority over the tower to transmit a barrier spell composed of chaos energy to another planet.

"You are looking down on my tower if you think this is testing its capabilities," Wanda said. "I used thousands of units of Cosmic Energy from a dead Celestial's heart, my Source of Chaos, multiple metric tonnes of materials like Vibranium, Adamantium, Uru, and more, and the core of a life-bearing planet alongside your literal body as the catalyst that brought them all together. Trust me, pushing this tower to its limits means that you are planning to destroy this galaxy. Minimum."

"Good to know," Alex chuckled at Wanda's prideful tone as if she was talking about her new toy and showing it off to him.

As the spell he had cast through the tower took effect, Wanda felt a sensation that she'd only felt a few times before transmitting from Alex.

"You got more Infinity Stones?" She asked with a surprised expression.

"Yeah," he nodded. "A fragment of the Reality Stone and the Mind Stone each. But I just need to deal with the counterattack of one of your variants."

"That blonde one, huh …" Wanda mumbled thoughtfully. "You sure you don't just want to cut off her access? You could capture her and take care of her easily."

"Yeah, but then I wouldn't be able to use her," Alex said. "I can't directly use her as a tool like how I can with Ayesha, Cindy, or Yelena. That's why she can serve the purpose of a villain for me so that I can swoop in and liberate the planets that are under her regime."

"A tale as old as time," she mumbled. "Anyway, I don't care. Show me around~," she practically dragged him back through the window of their bedroom to have him show her around their house.

***

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