Marvel Magic Case Files

Chapter 1731 Dreams and the Past

She lay on the soft mattress, darkness enveloped the entire room, only the faint light from the night light outside the corridor squeezed in through the crack of the door. The villa was very quiet, Salomon did not stay here overnight. He did not stay overnight in this villa, and Natasha did not know where he went. After each lovemaking, he would leave, and Dinah would come in to pick up the wet sheets and bedding.

She felt sore and drowsy, and the mattress against her body seemed to swallow her up.

She closed her eyes drowsily and fell downwards.

There was almost no end to the fall, and her consciousness was surging in endless fragments of memories. The sunlight of her youth once again penetrated the leaves and fell into her eyes. Natasha fell in the darkness, unable to realize what she saw, until the familiar sound of gunfire brought her consciousness back.

Gunshots. Natasha heard the gunshots.

She jumped up subconsciously, and then she found herself standing barefoot on hot gravel. Gunshots came from afar, as if she was on a battlefield. The scene in front of her seemed to be distorted by the hot air rising above the summer cement road. She could only see a golden figure charging on the red desert. Next to the huge golden demigod, a heavily armored giant wrapped in flames rushed towards the huge mountain-like object at the end of the horizon.

Strange shapes filled her sight, trying to block the path of the golden-armored demigod, but without exception they were knocked down, chopped up, and flattened. She tried to see the appearance of those strange shapes, but some kind of warning from the depths of her soul made her look away. Natasha found that there was no sun here, but the scorching heat still penetrated through her skin, and in contrast, it was the coldness from her soul.

She couldn't see the huge object at the end of the horizon, but she could hear the brass bell on the towering clock tower as tall as a skyscraper banging like crazy, like a charge horn. The sound of gunfire stimulated her nerves, like a heartbeat. She realized that she was not wearing anything, no clothes to shield her from the cold and her vision.

She subconsciously scanned the surroundings in an attempt to find shelter, only to discover that the so-called rocks in this desert were actually strange stone piles made of deformed bones and red sandstone. Ignorance protected her sanity, and when she looked away, she immediately forgot what she had seen. Something, an invisible thing, was shaped by the fear that seeped out of her soul. That thing had beautiful cheeks that were difficult to tell whether it was male or female, and obscene dances and a musk that was so thick that it was sickening flowed from its mind, forming a body in ignorance, fear, and desire.

"You're into pleasure, aren't you?" the creature continued to make obscene gestures, and it said in her voice, "Why not enjoy yourself?"

Natasha opened her mouth and found that she couldn't refuse. Her desire was ignited by supernatural power, and endless hunger and itching spread from the depths of her bones. She couldn't wait to rub something into her body. Before she could react, a deafening gunshot rang in her ears, and the weird and deformed body full of dark sexual attraction was shattered into pieces.

She turned her head and found that her vision was burning. A black-armored giant with a halo of fire around his head stepped on crimson gravel and passed by her. The horrible heat ignited the air and her lungs. She looked away in fear and immediately forgot about the burning figure. Her memory formed a hole, and the edges of her thoughts were smoldering. Natasha could almost smell the smell of her cerebral cortex burning from her nose.

"Don't look." A pair of rough hands covered her eyes. The man's tone and physical contact made her feel familiar. "Don't listen."

When she regained consciousness, everything was dark.

She could hear the breathing of the people around her and smell their sweat. In this small and enclosed space, only the cool breeze from the tiny gaps kept her from suffocating. With three dull thumps under her feet, a tiny flame lit up in front of her. She saw that the crowd in front of her was densely packed with people wearing shining bronze armor, and these men were all looking at her.

Natasha realized that she was only looking through this man's eyes, seeing what he had seen before. She found that the armor on these people had scars all over it, and even the strongest man had a look of fatigue in his eyes.

"Brothers, listen to me carefully." The man holding the torch said, "Tonight we will make the Trojans pay with blood. Tonight we will have the power to kill. Think about your wives and children. They can't sleep every day because of our life and death in the ten years of bloody battle. They are no longer young, but we are still here. Do as I say, and you can meet again."

The men wore Corinthian helmets with crimson manes, and the light was barely enough to illuminate their eyes. They held their shining short swords and shields in their hands. There were only a few of them, but each of them possessed amazing courage and strength.

"Diomedes, Menelaos, Agamemnon." He called out the names of the warriors one by one. He paused when he spoke of the last one, a boy with vengeance in his eyes, who looked very much like the famous hero. "Neoptolemus, son of Achilles. The brothers of Hector are yours, avenge your father, my friend. Do not stop fighting because of pain, do not be afraid of the honor that is about to be won. Remember why we live, remember where we are going, remember what we desire, remember why we fight."

"We are at your service, Odysseus."

The man who was speaking lowered his head and looked at the bronze helmet on his knees.

The firelight illuminated the helmet, and through the reflection of the bronze helmet, Natasha saw a pair of familiar black eyes.

"I have the right to be selfish once, for everything I will give, Athena." The owner of those eyes stared at the helmet, as if looking at Natasha hiding behind infinite time. This feeling frightened Natasha, and she tried to hide herself. She heard the man whisper, "I have the right to live for myself once. For Penelope, for Telemachus, my wife and son."

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It was already noon the next day when Natasha Romanov saw him again.

Horrible dreams haunted her all night. She saw the carnage taking place, but was powerless to stop it. She saw supernatural phenomena accompanying the warriors, and saw a baby thrown from the city wall and smashed into pulp on the ground, but she could do nothing. When she woke up, only the debris of last night's dream remained, like ripples gradually weakening on a calm lake. If she didn't think about it deliberately, she could hardly remember what she had seen.

This is just a dream, she said to herself. No, you know this is not a dream, dreams are false, but some things really happened. She saw him sitting at the dining table, flipping through a book bound in old leather, the pages of the musty book were yellow and black, as if dust and debris would fall off if he flipped through them casually.

Salomon raised his head and looked at Natasha with his obsidian eyes.

"Good morning, Ms. Romanov." The old housekeeper said in a clear voice, "It seems that you have had a good sleep."

Natasha subconsciously pulled herself into her thin silk pajamas and said with a hint of embarrassment, "Any food?"

She felt like she hadn't enjoyed such a comfortable sleep in years.

There was no pressure, only a soft bed and quiet darkness. She suddenly remembered what Dinah had said yesterday. Everything in this family was prepared for her, or more precisely, for her child. She had always felt that the name Dinah had given was very familiar, but two days of indulgence left her with insufficient energy to think, until she heard the name again in her dream last night.

"Of course." The old butler nodded with a smile. "Would you like some fried bacon, master? It's almost lunchtime. If I'm not mistaken, you must not have had breakfast."

"You guessed it right, old man." Salomon closed the book. "Now I want hot sugar and grease."

The old butler reached out and took two plates full of food and two glass bottles full of cold orange juice from the automatic dining cart and placed them in front of Salomon and Natasha. He smiled kindly at Natasha, like a grandfather facing a child. "Ms. Dinah will take good care of you, Ms. Romanov. You need energy."

Natasha picked up a thin slice of fried bacon and put it in her mouth, biting it with a crunching sound.

"It's delicious, thank you." Seeing Natasha start to eat, the old butler nodded politely to the host. He left the dining cart here and left the restaurant with a thick file. The cool breeze in the early morning passed through the green shade and sunshine in the backyard, poured into the villa, and blew up the white silk curtains. Natasha sighed with satisfaction and leaned back in the chair to relax her sore muscles. "I don't understand."

"what?"

"Why did you choose to hide here?"

Natasha poured herself and Salomon a glass of orange juice, her loose silk pajamas falling naturally, exposing her beautiful body to the air. "Besides the emperor, you have other identities. You could hide in the manor in Oxfordshire, watching Victor von Doom face challenges from NATO and the country, and then show up at the right time. But now you choose to hide in Texas, using this identity that you have disguised for more than a hundred years. This is unreasonable."

"My enemy is not human. To be precise, human is not the biggest threat. There are still things behind the curtain looking for me. They are afraid of what I will do." Salomon took a sip from the cup. He pretended not to see Natasha's eyes on the book and pushed the book away. When Dinah finished dealing with the trivial matters of life in the villa, she would take the book away.

"I believe in Bayonetta and Jeanne. But whether it is the Emperor, the Avenger King Arthur or Salomon, it is impossible not to use the power from the outer dimension. Now I am hiding here, isolated from the outer dimension, so I can avoid their sight. They can't know what I am doing, but I can monitor their conspiracy to pry open the matter universe."

"Have you been this cautious for eight thousand years? As a mortal, not a god with extraordinary powers?"

Salomon responded with a look in the affirmative.

"If you were wearing a tinfoil hat, these words would be more convincing." Natasha said with a smile, "Are they the gray men or the lizard men? I always feel that the lizard men are talking about the Skrulls. This shouldn't be a conspiracy theory."

"Nick Fury once thought that the biggest threat to mankind was terrorist organizations. Later, he thought that the biggest threat to mankind was alien fleets from space. But neither of these is true. The biggest threat to mankind is what came to Earth with Thanos' fleet - that is a disaster for all intelligent races. Now they have taken a small part of their attention from the Eternal Blood War to focus on mankind - the appearance of the Infinity Stones on Earth is not a coincidence, but the result of countless conspiracies. They threw out bait to guide Thanos to attack the Earth. They know that mankind will never give up such a treasure, and they also know that I will stand up to resist. Then, they can find me and kill me."

Natasha said no more doubts.

Governments around the world have had their own opinions about Thanos's alien fleet since the Emperor privately warned the world through Regent Victor von Doom. Even institutions with deep space observation capabilities cannot be sure whether the column of uniformly moving reflective objects in the information provided by the Emperor is a meteorite or an alien fleet.

However, because of the power the emperor possessed in outer space, no one dared to completely deny the emperor's words.

Under the guidance of the idea of ​​"mutually assured destruction", the five permanent members of the UN Security Council all have a "dead hand" system of submarines equipped with nuclear warheads. The emperor also has a "dead hand", which is a nuclear warhead suspended in the earth's orbit. According to military experts, it is difficult to intercept giant distributed nuclear bombs launched from outer space with existing technology, and no one knows how many nuclear warheads the emperor actually has. With nuclear weapons, the emperor's words carry a lot of weight.

This caused some countries to be quite awkward in dealing with Yugoslavia, because they could neither confirm nor deny this threat. Agreeing with the emperor's words would put them in a passive position in politics and trade, while denying would result in them being excluded from Yugoslavia's cooperation list and missing out on the science and technology that the emperor was willing to share.

"Odin is dying. He has lived for more than 500,000 years. The dark forces he once suppressed are about to rise." Salomon did not even raise his head, as if he already had the answer to this question. "The Asgard Empire's plan to fight against the outer dimensions is about to fail. The aftermath of this failure may destroy the Earth and humanity. All we can do is wait and learn lessons and strength from this failure."

"Tell me you have a plan."

"I have a plan, and the key pieces have already fallen into place."

"I feel relieved to hear you say that." Natasha tilted her head and picked up the fork again. "You always have a way, don't you?"

"You trust me too much, Natasha. I'm not a god. I can't solve all problems."

"So far, you haven't failed. Unlike Tony, his plans always cause trouble, just like Ultron." Natasha pointed at Salomon with the fork in her hand, "Do you know why you have never been able to integrate into Stark and Rogers' small group? Compared with your ability, your thoughts are more dangerous. Even after Wanda and Pietro joined the Avengers, their temperaments still seemed out of place - Tony thought it was because they had not let go of their hatred - Maximoff no longer needed to draw strength from hatred. Only Nick Fury realized that the psychological transformations Wanda and Pietro had undergone were no less than their physical transformations."

Natasha thought of what Nick Fury had concealed from her and couldn't help but sneer. The demise of SHIELD was everyone's decision. Except for Nick Fury himself, no one wanted to see SHIELD continue to be no different from Hydra. Perhaps the SHIELD led by Agent Coulson is the purest SHIELD established by Peggy Carter.

"Nick Fury realized too late that he should have stopped you from socializing with Rogers. That simple Brooklyn boy knew things he shouldn't have known."

"Captain Rogers only knows the real cause of World War II. It is not the beer hall speech but the chain reaction of the Great Depression from the New York Stock Exchange and the complete collapse of the Bretton Woods system. He now knows that the real cause of the Great Depression is unemployment and inflation. The causes of unemployment and inflation are the inverted relationship between monetary wages and real wages, which leads to insufficient liquidity. The insufficient liquidity is because one percent of the people occupy more than 50 percent of the wealth."

Salomon shrugged. "The solution to the problem is to stop production, which means unemployment, and then issue more money to increase liquidity, using the printing press to exchange for goods with labor value. Then the rich will grab all the wealth again, leaving the poor with the leftovers. When these leftovers are eaten up, a liquidity crisis will occur. Unemployment, additional money issuance, and a cycle will repeat until all the labor value is squeezed out and the system will collapse."

Natasha knew that Salomon was right, this pessimistic world was just so bad.

"You let a Brooklyn boy who dropped out of elementary school learn this knowledge?" Natasha raised her eyebrows. She knew that Steve Rogers had been recommended to read George Orwell's "1984". The Brooklyn boy who liked to use pencils must have read the book seriously - Nick Fury would not even control which book Steve Rogers read - and then something bad happened. The person who explained the book to Steve Rogers was sitting in front of her, the only person in the Avengers who was capable of skimming off the foam of complex political ideas and accurately scooping out a piece of meat from the hot soup of human society.

"No wonder he always has a problem with Tony Stark."

"Tony Stark did not betray the military-industrial complex. He simply gave up low-end weapons production. Boeing and Lockheed Martin have to pay royalties to Stark Group every year. Even if Stark Group's weapons production workshop is without electricity for a year, Stark Group's stock will continue to rise, and its employee benefits are still enviable. The fluctuation of Stark Group's stock is nothing more than a short-selling method by financial speculators."

Salomon said dissatisfiedly, "Are you here to ask me about the news of these Avengers colleagues who are wanted by the United States and Europe, Natasha?"

"I have reason to care, don't I?"

"I have parted ways with Captain Rogers because he cannot accept the painful reality that smashing the old world will cost blood. Ideologically, he is just an ordinary American who has dropped out of elementary school and does not have the wisdom to see the future. Politically, he can only face the visible rain of bullets and has no courage to make cruel decisions. I admit that he has the courage of kindness, but this courage is useless except for fighting against Hydra on the other side of the good and evil spectrum of S.H.I.E.L.D. Unless he can make a decision, just like when he rescued James Barnes, abandon his childish fantasies and choose to embark on the road of saving the world, otherwise he can only act as a vigilante and a public mascot. Fortunately, King T'Challa of Wakanda likes Rogers with his childish thoughts very much, otherwise I can only kill him to avoid any trouble."

"Where's Dr. Banner?"

"Dr. Banner is living a happy life. As long as he wants, I can send Betty Ross to Wakanda at any time. The premise is that she doesn't care that her father is still soaking in the jar." Salomon put down the cutlery. At this time, Dinah, who had finished dealing with trivial matters, finally came to the restaurant. She was twisting a beautifully tailored handmade suit in her hand, and there was a shoe box on the automatic cart behind her. "This is not an interrogation site, Miss Agent." Salomon said, "You still have a lot of time. Texas is getting hotter and hotter. We are going to Zurich for vacation, and you will come with us."

Happy New Year! Thank you for another year of companionship!