Bonds and Binary

The scent of sate ayam wafted through the Harper kitchen as Wulan threaded skewers of marinated chicken, her batik apron dusted with peanut sauce. Kirana, perched on a stool, "helped" by arranging lime wedges into a smiley face.

"Al's been weird since Glowy Man came," she declared, licking peanut butter off her fingers.

Wulan smiled. "Your brother's always weird, Sayang."

"Weirder. He stares at his watch like it's a snake."

In the basement lab, Arlan was staring—not at his watch, but at the holographic schematics hovering above Stark's wrist gauntlet. The blueprints detailed a Nen-conductive alloy Stark dubbed "AuraFlex," its molecular structure shimmering like woven sunlight.

"Your notes on aura wavelengths were… quaint," Stark said, zooming in on a neural interface. "But with some repulsor tech, we could—"

"—turn Nen into a particle beam. Yeah, I got that," Arlan interrupted. "But aura isn't electricity. It's alive. Force it into your binary grids, and it'll rebel."

Wanda leaned against the doorframe, peeling a salak fruit. "He's right. My magic hates your machines."

Stark snorted. "Magic, schmagic. It's all quantum physics in a party dress."

Pietro zipped in, snatching the fruit from Wanda's hand. "Says the man dressed like a radioactive peacock."

The banter died when Daniel descended the stairs, clutching a Hydra dagger wrapped in cloth. "Another one. On the porch."

The blade bore a new message: HE IS COMING.

The Winter Soldier's Gambit

Midnight at the Queensboro Bridge. The Winter Soldier stood silhouetted against the Hudson, his vibranium arm glinting under the sodium lamps. Arlan approached alone, Zetsu masking his aura.

"You warned us," Arlan said. "Why?"

The Soldier's human eye twitched. "Asset… malfunctioning."

"You're remembering. That's not a malfunction."

A Hydra sniper round ricocheted off the railing. The Soldier snarled, shoving Arlan aside as the second bullet meant for him struck concrete.

"Go," the Soldier growled. "They'll purge me."

Arlan's En flared, sensing four agents on the rooftop. "Not tonight."

Stark's repulsors boomed overhead. "Kid, you've got a terrible sense of dramatic timing!"

Chaos in the Crossfire

The bridge became a battleground. Wanda's chaos tendrils yanked snipers from their perches. Pietro disarmed explosives with precision only speed allowed. Stark dueled a helicopter, quips flying faster than missiles.

Arlan faced the Winter Soldier, who fought Hydra agents with feral desperation. "You don't have to go back!"

"No choice," the Soldier rasped, snapping a Hydra operative's neck. "They're in my head."

A neural override command blared through the Soldier's earpiece: RETURN OR SELF-DESTRUCT.

Arlan lunged, Ren surging as he ripped the earpiece free. The Soldier collapsed, screaming, as decades of programming short-circuited.

Wanda knelt, her scarlet energy threading through his mind. "Sleep."

Aftermath: Fractured Code

The Soldier awoke in the Harper basement, chained with AuraFlex. Stark scanned his neural implants, whistling. "Hydra's code is spaghetti. But deletable spaghetti."

Pietro tossed him a risoles. "Eat. You look like death."

The Soldier—James—stared at the pastry. "Bucky…"

Wanda's eyes widened. "Your name?"

"Don't know. Just… echoes."

Arlan handed him a StarkPad looping footage of Captain America. "Recognize him?"

Bucky's metal fist clenched. "Steve."

Family Threads

At dawn, Wulan set an extra place at the table. Bucky ate in silence, Kirana studying him like a science project.

"Can your arm turn into a blender?"

"Kiki," Arlan warned.

Bucky's lips twitched. "Not yet."

Daniel clapped his shoulder. "Stay. We've got room."

Wanda caught Arlan's gaze, her smile softer than moonlight.

Hydra's Endgame

In a bunker beneath New York, Hydra's council convened. A screen displayed the Tesseract-Nen core, now stabilized.

"Activate the God's Eye," the leader ordered. "Let them burn in their own light."

The machine hummed, reality warping around it.