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Since he said he'd leave by car, Henry naturally did just that—driving off with Kitty.
The Howling Commandos flew off toward the northeast. There was probably a secret base for them somewhere in that direction. Henry, on the other hand, turned around and headed south. He drove to the outskirts of Monroe, the nearest city, then abandoned the car and disappeared.
Although the alien corpse in the vehicle had been taken away, the alien blood splattered across the windshield—and the bullet holes—had not been cleaned up. Driving a car like that into the city would have been far too conspicuous.
A conscientious police officer would notice something like this in minutes.
Don't assume American cops never meddle—that's only true in big cities. In small towns, cops manage everything from the sky to the ground to the seashore. They're practically city wardens with law enforcement authority and guns.
And Henry was never planning to drive back to the West Coast anyway. Even without sleep, it would take several days to reach Los Angeles.
Sure, Stark Industries didn't require him to clock in—but that didn't mean he wanted a cross-country road trip.
Since he had no interest in that kind of journey, Henry ditched the car in the outskirts of Monroe and then grabbed Kitty, flying back to the West Coast in one go.
As someone who regularly rode "Kryptonian Airlines" between the city and the Sheep Cave Valley laboratory, Kitty was no longer a tiger that would pee herself just from a roller coaster ride. This trip was a bit longer than usual, but it was still over in the blink of an eye.
Henry didn't take Kitty straight back to his rented place in Los Angeles. Instead, he first went to the wilderness near Sheep Cave Valley Laboratory, caught a wild deer, snapped its neck, and left it as Kitty's dinner. Only then did he head back to the city alone.
It was fortunate he hadn't brought Kitty back with him.
Just as he'd feared, his apartment had been invaded by a swarm of FBI agents collecting evidence. There were even technicians examining his computers.
He didn't know exactly when they'd started, but it was already nightfall, and a large group was still working overtime.
The Stark i486 desktop he'd been using was gone—taken away entirely. Any portable materials, such as discs and videotapes, had also vanished, packed up and loaded into FBI vehicles.
The speakers and audio equipment hadn't been spared either. Not only had the machines been dismantled, but the silver wires he'd carefully laid out were yanked into a tangled mess.
After such rough handling, those cables were probably damaged. Even if reinstalled, their original sound quality would be gone. After all, did they have any idea how picky a Kryptonian's ears were?
As for the computer Henry had personally assembled, its operating system and hardware differed too much from anything commercially available. The technicians didn't dare dismantle or remove it without authorization.
They were powering it on and poking around inside, though it was unclear whether their blind tinkering would yield anything meaningful.
Henry's operating system was based on Linux, but it wasn't a common distribution like Red Hat or SUSE. The command syntax was completely different.
A real expert might figure it out given enough time—but that wasn't something just anyone could do. Henry's custom system didn't even include documentation or a help command.
To make things more confusing, he'd deliberately renamed the commands instead of following standard conventions, creating a system all his own.
Even BB, the core cleaning robot, had been taken—charging dock and all. The FBI agents had even carried off Kitty's metal food bowl.
If Kitty ever came back and saw that, she'd probably pounce on whoever stole her dinner bowl.
Judging by the scale of the operation, it looked like the FBI had been waiting a long time for this opportunity. Henry didn't doubt their identity—their badges were worn openly, and they were dressed in official FBI jackets. It was unlikely that S.H.I.E.L.D. was impersonating them.
The camera and projector equipment used to assist Charlize Theron had long since been dismantled and taken away. That made Henry suspect there might be another film studio pulling strings behind the scenes.
The digital imaging technology he'd led Stark Industries to develop had already attracted targeted action from Sony—but Henry was certain that other studios wouldn't sit idle if given the chance.
Although the "FBI" that had issued a shoot-on-sight order for Henry had actually been S.H.I.E.L.D. in disguise, the real FBI was more than happy to go along with it. If things blew up later, someone else could always take the fall.
Now that the opportunity had landed in their laps, why wouldn't they act?
So yes—thanks a lot to those green-skinned bastards. Damn Skrulls.
Naturally, Charlize Theron, who lived in the same building, noticed what was happening to Henry's apartment.
She had probably just wrapped up a long day of work, because her agent, J.J. Harris, was also present. Ignoring her agent's attempts to stop her, Charlize protested the FBI's actions alongside old Gary.
Their protests, of course, had no effect.
Although the FBI operation didn't involve a court-issued search warrant, there had already been a prior "FBI" action carried out by S.H.I.E.L.D. impersonators—and Henry had fled the scene. As a result, the apartment was considered a crime scene and could be investigated directly.
This left Charlize frantic. She repeatedly begged J.J. Harris to find some way to fix the situation. But when it came to an agency like the FBI, even a seasoned agent like him had very limited influence or connections.
At this stage in her career, she simply wasn't powerful enough to stand up to the FBI—not even to argue her case properly.
So… should Henry ask Tony Stark to step in again?
The two aliens from earlier had been a public matter. Whether Stark lifted a finger or not didn't matter to Henry—as long as the people behind Stark noticed, someone would clean things up.
But this mess was clearly a private matter. Worse, he didn't know who was really behind it, or how complicated things might get.
More importantly, Henry didn't believe his relationship with Tony Stark was the kind of brotherly bond where favors were freely exchanged.
For wealthy people, there's only one reason to get involved—profit. Without benefit, why would someone who burns through hundreds of thousands in minutes bother dealing with irrelevant trouble?
Calling in a favor wasn't impossible—but it might only work once. After that, everything would be strictly business.
Personal favors require relatively equal standing. When the gap is too wide, why would a rich man bother exchanging favors with some nobody off the street?
If this were a full-powered Superman, anyone he approached would be the one reaching upward. But in the eyes of the world, Henry was just a somewhat clever mutant—unless he was willing to reveal far more of his hand.
Henry didn't believe his face alone was enough to truly order Tony Stark around. What he'd told Barbara earlier had just been him talking big.
So the easiest solution to this problem was to wait until the Captain Marvel incident concluded, and Nick Fury returned to S.H.I.E.L.D. Let them clean up the mess they'd left behind.
Whether this situation had been caused by Skrulls impersonating agents or not, S.H.I.E.L.D. still bore responsibility for letting aliens infiltrate them. Henry had no obligation to pay for their negligence.
Whether S.H.I.E.L.D. later chose to hold the Skrulls accountable—that was their business.
All Henry could hope was that nothing else went wrong before Nick Fury stepped in to handle the aftermath.
As for rushing in to stop the FBI on the spot—Henry never even considered it. The apartment had already been trashed. Showing up now and forcing them to return his belongings would be pointless.
At best, they'd unload the items from their vehicles and dump them back inside. He'd still have to clean up himself. There was no chance they'd restore everything to its original state.
The losses incurred here only made Henry feel more justified about what he planned to do next.
After all—what's owed will always be repaid. The timing just hadn't been right before.
The Skrulls owed him.
And it was time to collect.
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