“I will miss you.” *Muah* Nat kissed my forehead causing me to smile.

As she moved back, I saw our surroundings changing. It was a land surrounded by nothing but water. “No!” I struggled to move only to find I couldn't as a whisper of a certain number entered my ears.

“95,489!” Tears rolled out of my eyes heavily as I tried desperately to get free.

“Let go!” I screamed as I watched Nat moving back.

“95,489!” The whisper came once more.

Nat smiled as she took a step back. “Goodbye David!” I watched helplessly as Nat fell into the pit in Vormir.

“No!” I regained control of my body and jumped in after her.

However, instead of seeing the abysmal deep chasm, it was darkness surrounded by literal numbers, ‘95,489’.

My surroundings began shaking as I began hearing a very familiar voice. “David!”

I opened my eyes to see Nat looking at me in concern, as she stopped shaking me. “Nat!” I felt relief flood my heart, along with the wetness on my cheeks. I launched up and hugged her surprising her.

“Are you okay?” She asked me in concern as I tightly held onto her.

‘Screw the universe! I won’t let anything happen to you!’ I promised myself. If Thanos somehow managed to get all the stones together, I would do everything in my power to stop her from jumping down like in the movies and my dream.

“What happened?” I felt her arms stroke my back.

“Just a terrible nightmare.” I sighed as I told her. I knew the dream was a likely consequence of being in the presence of a mind stone a lot. The same thing had happened when I was in the presence of the space stone last time, so I wasn’t too worried.

However, the worrying thing was I had finally begun to remember my dream now along with those numbers that gave me an ominous feeling.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Nat asked me.

I just summarised my dream in few words to her. “You were stupid and wanted to sacrifice yourself for others.” Nat pulled me away before looking me in the eyes.

“David…” Nat began but I interrupted the advice she was going to dish me.

“Please don’t! I don’t want to see you die or anything like that! That’s the last thing I want to happen to you. Even if I must forsake the entire world’s life, I won’t let you die before I do.” She gave me a sad smile as she caressed my cheek.

“That’s not fair David. 1 life for many lives.” I shook my head as I grabbed her hands.

“I don’t care. Just don’t die before me. I can’t see you dying.” I kissed her hands as she pulled me into her.

“That’s still not fair. What would I do without you in this world? I live just for you. Are you telling me to live without you?” I didn’t know how to answer her question.

“I don’t know Nat. But I don’t think I can live in a world without you for a moment.” I felt her hands going around my neck.

“Then how about when the day comes, let’s just die together.” I stilled as I heard her.

“We live together and die together.” I looked up to see her beautiful face looking at me as her words entered my ears.

I smiled as I heard that. “Yeah, we live together and die together,” I told her back, with no intention of keeping that promise.

I promised myself that once I got my freedom the first thing I would do, would be to give my wife all the powers that I held so that she couldn’t die like me. ‘We will live together, forever…’

Falling asleep in each other’s embrace I woke up in the morning.

“You sure you are, okay?” Nat asked me as she was about to leave the house in her casual clothes.

“I am fine, just get your mission done and come back quickly.” She smiled as she leaned in and gave me a peck on the lips just as her garage door opened and a car came out.

She looked at me in slight annoyance while I smiled. “How many times do I have to tell you not to mess with my poor cars?”

I raised my hand apologetically. “I just updated its auto-driving mode and just boosted its performance.”

Grumbling something about originality and vintage she took off.

Seeing her leave, I closed the door with a smile. At that moment the smile on my face vanished as I began to frown. ‘What the hell is with the number 95,489?’ I wondered feeling deep grief.

I had tried looking at every clue related to those numbers: Individually, as pairs, as coordinates for the earth and outer space, as planet identification, as dates, as everything possible. Yet nothing matched or made sense with those numbers. There was no correlation between those numbers and me and Nat, and the new version of the dream I had yesterday.

‘Fucking stones!’ I cursed as a portal appeared before me allowing me to move towards the Hydra base containing the mind stone.

I will leave no stones to understand the senselessness that was going on with my dreams, now that this concerned Nat's life too. Fuck being in a loop or kicked into an alternate dimension, but if as much as a hair on her body is hurt then I won't spare the fucker.

I stopped moving as my bots morphed my outer image to reflect the light to make me invisible. I didn’t stop to wait for the morphing to finish but rather an incredulous theory popped into my head. ‘Could it be the future me, warning about something?’

With my dream last night including Natasha too, in Vormir(a piece of information only known to me), I knew this was personal. ‘But the numbers? What the hell do they mean? And what is my future self trying to warn me by showing Nat jumping of a stupid cliff?’

I wondered as I moved towards the sceptre holding the mind stone. ‘Note to self- if I ever got to send a message to myself in the past, make it fucking clear!’

My UI clearly took the note down.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I glanced at the serum in which contained a red misty substance that revolved rapidly inside the tube without shattering the holder from the pressure. This was the Chaos and Speed factor that would be added into my already improved Serum.

Once it was added I will call my new serum in my system 'SICHE', which stands for Speed, Inhuman, Chaos, Hulk, and Extremis serum.

The most interesting thing to know was during this span of 2 years my inhuman ability kept growing much to my wonder. It wasn’t a large growth but rather a small growth every year. The time I could see the future increased by 0.1 seconds per year. Right now, I could see 0.3 seconds into the future.

This was why I was reluctant in using anti-HIE serum and starting over. I didn’t want to take the risk of losing those extra 0.2 seconds of progress. After all with the upcoming fights all the advantages will be beneficial to me. Instead, I just used the 2 years to develop a way to simply add those two powers onto the HIE serum running through my system.

I employed the mental defence technique that I had gleaned of the still unravelling mind stone enhanced by Rooted Potato and magic itself. Followed by that, without any delay, I stabbed the serum into me.

The raw power of chaos going through my veins was certainly exciting, hence my reason for trying this serum on an uninhabited planet in an entirely different galaxy, in case everything went kaboom as I awakened. After all, the name ‘Chaos’ itself told the unpredictability of the power.

Fortunately, nothing of that sort happened other than a red glow outside my body while everything began slowing down to a standstill for my perception. This was the speed factor that I received and improved from Pietro’s body. A speed to travel at 100 Mach while observing the world around me just as fast. It would just be a pipe dream for anyone to even hit me now, in tandem with rooted potato and precognition.

Turning off the ridiculous speed and perception I sat down and studied the Chaos magic. Strangely Chaos magic wasn’t too different to understand as it had similar properties to Eldritch magic I had mastered. Still, there were some differences, which wasn’t too problematic considering the basic rules and knowledge of it on the forbidden books I had read, to combat against a Scarlet Witch.

In order to spend some time to understand and get used to these 2 new powers with my rooted potato I sat down.

Reality was now my bitch. Millions of things that I couldn’t do or be restricted with Eldritch magic now became available to me.

However, I had to be careful of the primordial being that might attempt to use me as an anchor to be free like in the comics. My only advantage was that unlike Wanda, I had the best mental defence in the universe set up, so there was a 95% chance that being would prefer Wanda over me. The remaining 5% was because the being might just be chaotic and decide to go for me just for the memes.

Some would ask me ‘why I was so confident in fighting against a mental battle against a primordial being?’. Few reasons: calm mind, making rooted potato to fight a mental battle 24/7 while I slept peacefully, multiple rooted potatoes that acted like extra minds so that it won’t be like fighting one person at all but rather 2 or 3 people, my mental defences, my precognition and whatever being it is, it is imprisoned and restricted.

If they weren't sealed he/she would have already wreaked havoc on this world like Dormamu had when Kaecilius had just opened the gates to free him. Therefore, I still stand a chance against the progenitor of Chaos Magic.

I didn’t simply dive into Chaos magic blindly. I had made my preparations against it before jumping into it. I was not that stupid, considering how paranoid I have been with every power ups so far.

I was satisfied with the new powerups, so I deviated 2 Rooted potatoes to work on the ridiculously large data on the Mind stone. Even after all my minor gleams I still couldn’t see any traces of intrusion into my mind with the Mind Stone. Hence my reason for going full nerd mode on the Mind Stone.

Not to mention, the more I learn about the mind stone the better now that I must actively upgrade my mental defence against the Chaos magic progenitor. Until then, Asgardian genes had to be put on a hold.

Opening the portal, I just went back home having gotten used to Chaos magic enough to not be a danger to the people around me and Nat.