The crystal-clear menu in his mind—so clear it almost made him want to cry—instantly dispelled all of Levi's pent-up resentment.
Ability Analysis.
Those four words carried immense weight.
They meant that the old, barbaric era of copying abilities like opening blind loot boxes—leaving everything to luck—was officially over. From now on, he could see exactly what a target possessed and choose precisely what he wanted to take. The difference in experience was like this: a caveman poking blindly in the dark with a firebrand, suddenly shoved into top-tier powered exoskeleton armor, holding a precision sniper rifle with an 8× scope.
Completely different dimensions.
However, as his gaze moved down the menu and landed on the very first option, his entire body froze.
[1. Binary Form (Cosmic Energy Manipulation)]
"Hold on…" Levi's heart skipped. "Don't I already have this? Six years ago, during the light-speed engine explosion—I already copied it, didn't I? What, did the system reboot and wipe my save file while it was at it?"
This was not a small issue. If that ability was gone, things would get very interesting—in the worst way.
Suppressing his unease, he cautiously asked in his mind, "System. What's going on? I already have Binary Form."
[Answering host.]
The system's voice was the same as ever—cold, mechanical, utterly devoid of emotion. But this time, instead of a brief prompt, it delivered a long, detailed explanation that made his scalp prickle.
[Six years ago, due to severe damage to the system core during temporal transition, and because the copy target (light-speed engine explosion) was in an extremely unstable state of energy overflow, the 'Binary Form' you copied was an incomplete data fragment, with a completion rate of only 17%.]
[This fragment caused the original Tesseract energy within your body to remain in a long-term unstable state, continuously conflicting with your 'Regenerative Factor' and 'Super Soldier Serum,' severely draining your life essence.]
[During this reboot, thanks to resonance with a high-intensity, stable, homogenous energy entity (Carol Danvers), system energy has been fully restored.]
[The current option 'Binary Form' is a complete data template. Selecting it will repair and upgrade the fragmented data within your body, using it as a framework to fully integrate the Tesseract's original energy. Upon completion, you will gain perfect control over this energy.]
Levi read the explanation word by word. A chill shot up from his feet straight to the top of his skull. Cold sweat instantly soaked his back.
So that was it.
For six whole years, he'd been carrying around a ticking nuclear reactor inside his body.
He'd always thought his difficulty controlling the energy was because the power itself was too advanced, too high-level—something he simply wasn't skilled enough to handle. Only now did he realize the truth.
What he copied back then wasn't a full version at all.
It was a trial build—with bugs, exploits, and malware included.
No wonder.
No wonder he'd always felt like two forces inside him were constantly at war. One was the savage, destructive energy of the Tesseract. The other was the life force born from the fusion of his regenerative factor and the super soldier serum. Every single day, he'd had to act like the most cautious beast tamer, carefully guiding that feral monster inside him, terrified it might break free at any moment.
Like a bomb disposal expert sleeping every night with an armed nuclear warhead in his arms.
He'd believed this was the inevitable hardship of becoming strong.
Turns out, he'd just been playing stupid games.
The only reason he'd survived six years without blowing himself apart was because Logan's regenerative factor and Steve Rogers' super soldier foundation were absurdly robust. Anyone with a weaker base would've been torn to pieces by the internal conflict long ago.
And now—
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity lay before him.
A fully licensed, feature-complete, lifetime-support official version of the power.
It wouldn't just remove the greatest hidden danger inside him—it would catapult him directly from a trembling rookie clutching a bomb into someone who could detonate it at will and control the entire battlefield.
Was there even a choice to make?
"Then it's you! Binary Form!" Levi practically roared in his mind.
[Command confirmed. Initiating copy and integration of 'Binary Form' complete data template…]
The moment the system's prompt sounded, an unprecedented sensation swept through him.
A completely different energy flow was precisely extracted from the invisible resonance field between him and Carol. This time, it wasn't the savage agony of being electrocuted by billions of volts like six years ago. Instead, it was a gentle, orderly warmth, slowly flowing into his body—into his very soul.
If the first copy had been a brutal, reckless energy infusion…
This felt like microsurgery.
Perfect code.
A flawless genetic sequence.
It was engraved directly into the deepest logic of his existence.
He could see it—feel it. The Tesseract energy that had raged within him for six years, wild and uncontrollable, was like a herd of untamed horses finally encountering their destined rider.
Under the guidance of the new data template, the chaotic energy began to rearrange itself in elegant, arcane patterns. The violent, destructive particles were soothed, domesticated, and absorbed into a new, stable, immensely powerful cycle.
Levi closed his eyes.
Every cell in his body resonated in joyful harmony. His regenerative factor finally laid down its burden, no longer needing to guard against constant meltdown. The super soldier serum at last found its perfect match, fully integrating with the cosmic-level power instead of clashing with it.
It was as if he'd been running a pirated operating system for years—lagging, overheating, blue-screening daily—and now had finally installed the fully optimized official release.
The world itself felt different.
Before, his control over space energy had been crude—brute-forcing it, bending and twisting reality like a blacksmith smashing iron with a sledgehammer. Now, with a single thought, he felt like a master surgeon holding a scalpel, precisely editing space itself.
The sensation of absolute control was intoxicating.
---
But while Levi was undergoing his rebirth, Carol's experience was the exact opposite.
The instant he began copying, she felt an indescribable connection form between them. Information—something she couldn't comprehend—was flowing out of her, or rather, out of the very source of her power.
She didn't feel weaker.
The sensation was stranger than that.
It was as if she had become an open book—being read, page by page.
Then memories that weren't hers flooded into her mind without warning.
Mud-filled trenches. Artillery screaming overhead. A cigar-smoking man, weathered and grim, three bone claws bursting from the back of his hand…
A frozen cockpit. Endless blue ice outside the glass. A man in a blue, white, and red uniform smiling apologetically at her through the ice…
The images flashed by too fast to grasp, yet felt terrifyingly real.
She staggered back a step, staring at the man before her—eyes closed, an almost content expression on his face. Her shock turned into sheer horror and confusion.
Who was this man?
Why did he have the same power as her?
Why… could she see his memories?
As her thoughts spiraled toward overload, Levi opened his eyes.
A brilliant flash of gold flickered within them, deep as a universe full of stars.
He looked at Carol—at the uncontrolled arcs of energy still crackling around her—and smiled faintly.
He raised his hand and made a casual gripping motion.
In the next second, Carol felt her wild, runaway power seized by an invisible hand. It instantly became docile, obediently flowing back into her body. Even her Binary state was forcibly suppressed. The blinding golden glow faded, leaving her standing there like an ordinary person.
She hadn't even been able to think about resisting.
It was like a rookie who'd just learned to hold a rifle, disarmed by a battlefield veteran with nothing more than a glance.
"What… what did you do to me?" Her voice trembled for the first time.
"Nothing much," Levi said lightly. "Just tightened a loose faucet."
He stepped closer, stopping three meters away, his gaze calm and sincere.
"Your power is immense. But the way you control it is like a three-year-old swinging a siege hammer. Wasteful—and dangerous."
He met her eyes.
"Now, can we talk? About who you are, where you came from… and what you've forgotten."
Carol stared at him, lips moving, but no words came out. Her mind was in greater chaos than when she'd crashed back to Earth.
Something inside her wanted to trust him. Their shared power, his effortless domination of her abilities—it all created an instinctive sense of closeness. Yet six years of Kree indoctrination screamed at her to distrust every stranger.
"I…" she began—
A sudden roar of engines tore through the ruins.
Blinding headlights flared to life at the base's entrance, slicing through the Mojave night and locking onto them.
Levi frowned slightly.
He didn't need to look.
Nick Fury.
S.H.I.E.L.D. had arrived faster than expected.
"Looks like we're out of time," Levi said, glancing at the encircling black Chevy Suburbans. He turned to Carol. "If you want answers, trust me. Now—hold on."
Before she could ask what he meant, he stepped forward and grabbed her arm.
"Hold on to what?" she asked reflexively, stiffening at the warmth of his grip.
"Hold on while you experience," Levi grinned, "what real flight feels like."
A colossal surge of cosmic energy erupted from beneath his feet. Instead of igniting his entire body in light like Carol did, he compressed every ounce of power into a single point.
Boom—!
The ground shattered, a perfect circular crater forming instantly. With Carol in his arms, Levi shot upward like a rail-gun projectile, breaking the sound barrier in a blink.
Below them, Nick Fury and Phil Coulson—just stepping out of their vehicles—could only stare upward in stunned silence as a golden streak vanished into the sky, followed a heartbeat later by a thunderous sonic boom that rattled their eardrums.
"Coulson…" Fury muttered, removing his sunglasses and rubbing his aching temple. "Make a note of this. Starting today, add two more zeros to our department's budget."
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