Jump 130/131: Marvel Cinematic Universe

Jump 130/131: Marvel Cinematic Universe

Vol. 1

Location: Austria, 1942
Race: Sleeper Mech [-100]
Identity: Tech Expert
Drawbacks: [+1000] Steel Heart, Glory Of A Monster, Tipping The Scales

[Free]      Soundtrack of the Galaxy
[Free]      They Call Me "Star-Lord"
[Free]      Professor of Asskicking
[200/1900]  I Am Iron Man
[250/1900]  Grootologist
[350/1900]  Enhanced Senses
[650/1900]  Radiation Resistance
[700/1900]  Digital Ally
[700/2200]  Item Stipend (+300)
[Free]      Holotable
[750/2200]  SHIELD Membership
[800/2200]  I.C.E.R.
[Free]      Nitramene
[1000/2200] Vibranium Sample
[1300/2200] HYDRA Blueprints
[1700/2200] Arc Reactor (Upgraded)
[2200/2200] Organization

Vol. 2

Drawbacks: [+1800] Continuity, Sokovian Accord, Sovereign, Too Many Sorcerers, Background Stipend

[Free]      You're Welcome, By The Way
[Free]      For The Camera
[200/2800]  Enhancements
[500/2800]  Bring Out Veronica
[800/2800]  Like A Spider
[1100/2800] Pymtastic!
[1500/2800] Enlightenment
[1500/3300] Item Stipend (+500)
[Free]      Holotablets
[1800/3300] Particle Accelerator Lab
[2000/3300] HYDRA Construction Plans
[2100/3300] Wrist Bracers
[Free]      Particle Storage Container
[Free]      Ant-Man Suit
[Free]      Sling Ring
[Free]      Chakra Books
[2600/3300] Dwarven Forge
[2900/3300] Iron Man Mk L
[Free]      Outsourcing: Praetor Artificer Armor
[Free]      Call Trisha: Iron Man Mk L
[2950/3300] Love Sandwich: Praetor / Mk L
[3250/3300] Brazier of Bom'Galiath
[Free]      Skilled In Knowledge: An Arcane Tool
[3300/3300] Composite Research: Arcane Tool / Brazier of Bom'Galiath

Love Sandwich: Praetor Mk L
(Note: Some specified upgrades are marked as 'free' due to being part of one of the two preexisting armors.

[Free]      Arc Reactor, Enhanced
[Free]      Armor Plating
[Free]      Computer-Assisted Dodging
[300/1000]  Omnium Infusion
[Free]      Repulsor Tech
[Free]      Nanotech Weapons
[Free]      AI Slot
[Free]      Smart Targeting System
[350/1000]  Slim It Down
[400/1000]  Sensory Filters
[500/1000]  Improved Sensors
[700/1000]  Device Integration Slot: RIG
[Free]      Environmental Protection
[1000/1000] Nanite Storage System

Composite Research: The Arcane Artifact
[50/1000]   Appearance Alteration
[100/1000]  Unity
[200/1000]  Reshaping
[400/1000]  Recognized
[1000/1000] Spell Amplifier

---

In 1942, a man named Arnim Zola studied an interesting artifact dubbed the Tesseract. It achieved many things - it was capable of creating weaponry that far surpassed what was used in its day, and with it he created technological miracles that were a century ahead of the science of the day. All of them, sooner or later, would see the battlefield. But one was unlike the others; one of those miracles was an automaton that was somehow imbued with a mind.

Initially, the automaton was a mere curiosity, but as the days passed, Zola upgraded it even as he studied it further. It was very interesting to him - even if his primary goal was to ensure HYDRA's success, artificial life opened the doors to so much more. And yet, no matter how he tried, his success could not be replicated. Eventually, the automaton was given tasks, though Zola dared not let it get far from him. Simple tasks, helping with research, for it was as intelligent as any man and retained everything it was taught. It learned to upgrade itself. At first, it had been built on thin, spindly limbs in a grotesque mockery of a human form that would be better suited for horror films, but by late 1943, it had adapted a much more human form. To the point that it could pass for a human, if perhaps a masked one. Even at that, though, it still needed to periodically replace its power core.

Of course, in November 1943 the facility that the automaton called home was attacked by one Captain America, who liberated his allies. The facility was destroyed, of course, but not before the automaton had been ordered to delay the Captain and his now-liberated allies. Considering the opponent, it was little surprise that the automaton failed and was consumed in the explosion. What was very unexpected by all parties involved was the automaton surviving the explosion, emerging from the wreckage, and catching up with the group - but rather than employ violence, it instead sought a purpose. This was something Captain America promised to help it find, the automaton accompanied the group back to their base camp in Italy, and from there was turned over to Howard Stark and the SSR for further study.

As much as the automaton might have wanted to help with the fight directly, it was simply deemed impractical, and instead it was put to work... helping Howard Stark, and by extension the SSR, reverse engineer much of what HYDRA had done. It seemed much more able to provide data on things that weren't direct weapons, and in fact innovate on them - whether they were material sciences, aircraft, or rocketry. The war wound down, as expected, and the automaton continued to refine itself, bringing it ever closer in appearance to a human. Now, it reached point that it began to identify itself as male, and requested for Howard Stark to arrange an identity for him.

The identity fabricated gave him a name and a backstory, named him as an asset recruited during World War II, and explained away his decreasingly-robotic appearance as heavy prosthetics due to injuries sustained when he was liberated as a prisoner of war. This was suitable; his voice had gotten to the point where it sounded very nearly human, as opposed to early on where it sounded quite uncanny, and he'd begun to dress as any man would; a well-tailored suit can make anyone look better, after all, even if their face would appear to be carved of steel.

As the years progressed, he made an actual life for himself, reaching the point where he fabricated the material to look as lifelike as any human by the mid-1950s. He worked in the research division of the SSR, or rather SHIELD when they absorbed it, while building a life for himself outside of all of that. He was steadily less productive while innovations were made by others, but he had other goals that he was concentrating on, unbeknownst to SHIELD itself.

SHIELD wasn't the only transnational organization of its kind, of course, though it did work behind the scenes with NATO-aligned nations. The Soviets had Leviathan which worked quite similarly. But one that was quite unlike the others was an organization called EXALT. In fact, the closest equivalent to how that organization worked was HYDRA... except unlike HYDRA, EXALT had a unified purpose: to advance society, prepare it to be integrated with the wider network of civilizations surrounding Earth, and eliminating any threats to that order.

After all, unbeknownst to Earth, a dyson shell surrounded the inner solar system - just a bit further out than Mars' orbit. It's not difficult to cloak such a thing when you have enough of an edge, technologically speaking, and a very thorough study of higher dimensions. It's only tricky when you need to let something past, but that's what wormholes are for.

Speaking of HYDRA, that was one of EXALT's mandates - root them out and destroy them. This meant, of course, that the occasional death happened as a result of that - sometimes a man in a bunker, sometimes a bureaucrat, but always HYDRA had one less soldier at their disposal. And in addition to that, among certain influential individuals another conspiracy had been brewing back behind the scenes since 1947. One alleging contact with aliens. One purporting to share their technologies. One calling itself the Illuminati. Among the royalty and business magnates within its ranks, it counted Howard Stark as a member. Thus, when Howard Stark was assassinated by the Winter Soldier, the Illuminati also turned on HYDRA and proceeded to quite aggressively burn its members out of SHIELD. The organization was weaker in the short term, but as the years passed, it proved to be a change for the better.

Even if the result of a butterfly flapping its wings saw one Phillip Coulson enlist in the US Air Force, meet a pilot whose callsign was Cheeseburger, and eventually settle down with her. But Phil and Carol Coulson have their white picket fence, and it worked out well enough for them. Unrelated: around the time that the Coulsons got married, some group of alien refugees found their way to the dyson shell, and settled on one of the billion 'worlds' within it, trading with the other civilizations within.

Back to our ascended former-automaton however: it appeared he'd continued innovating off the books, and after leaving a device to a SHIELD agent to summon him if needed, he used the space race as a smokescreen to get off-world and explore with a scratch-built spaceship. His timing couldn't have been better - he ran across a refugee fleet just outside of the shell surrounding the inner solar system, and was in ... let us say a unique position to grant them refuge, in exchange for scans of their technology and getting a map of the network of wormholes used for faster-than-light travel. (The Kree followed in hopes of wiping them out and couldn't even find them. Several other civilizations inside the shell took a bit of offense to that. Earth never noticed.)

From there... the universe awaited, and it was quite the adventure to explore. At times, getting the resources to replace his power source was complicated, but it always kept life interesting, such as it was. Travelling the stars, meeting new people, chasing rumors, upgrading himself further, and making enemies. As one does. Which wouldn't really be quite so bad if it weren't a matter of him running afoul of a group of Ravagers, their Celestial employer, a warlord who was obsessed with balance, and the Sovereign among them.

The Ravagers escaped after finding him a far more capable combatant than they'd expected. Ego, the Celestial, was rumored to have been consumed by another planet - one that called itself a Hellstar, rather than a Celestial, before it disappeared. As for the warlord, Thanos... well, after encountering the former automaton after it prevented the culling of a couple of planets, Thanos' obsession shifted toward the single-minded purpose of eradicating him and pulling his secrets from his shattered corpse.

This went about as well for Thanos as one would expect, and the Chitauri were all but exterminated - turned out that said automaton had been busy building more of himself - and until Thanos' obsession turned to more elaborate plots involving the infinity stones, it looked as though his allies would be exterminated. Of course... the Sovereign clandestinely providing him resources was something rather unexpected, while their forces harassed and openly attacked the automaton as the Chitauri's numbers were depleted. If anything, this made him fight harder, working to do any number of things to foul up this unholy alliance.

Asgard was of course staunchly neutral, what did they care for a warlord outside their sphere of influence, and why would they anger an interstellar polity? The dwarves of Nidavellir, on the other hand... while their position was guaranteed by Asgard, they could see the writing on the wall when they were approached. Moreover, when Thor's misadventures saw him attacking the frost giants with whom Asgard had a treaty, and Loki's following attack on them with the Bifrost... they agreed to a treaty that would see them safe forevermore: Nidavellir was translocated, placed within the dyson shell surrounding Earth, and gradually integrated into the star forge while preserving their civilization.

Thanos still had the Infinity Gauntlet, mind you, but the golden glove provided by the Sovereign it was quite unlike what he might have once had. No use of it could be trivial, and so it was used much more sparingly - that is, primarily in direct combat with the automaton. But he still eventually gathered the stones, all save for the Mind Stone, which he assaulted Earth to obtain. But once he reached Earth, he found the Avengers standing in his way. But not just the Avengers, but also entire transhuman and Necron armies. Even with five Infinity Stones, he did not prevail.

In the months that followed the automaton met Adam Warlock, who had been designed to utilize the Infinity Stones (presumably after 'liberating' them from where they were secured - which he failed at), and subsequently destroyed him. Taking this as a personal affront, a connection was subsequently discovered between the automaton and the Hellstar - largely because the Sovereign empire was rapidly obliterated by the Hellstar actively consuming their worlds. A large number of survivors were offworld, of course, and still chased the automaton... but their strength was broken by what was the largest threat to interstellar civilization since Galactus.

The automaton returned to Earth, and was quickly beset upon by one Baron Mordo, who claimed that the automaton would destroy the world as it was known, and who had made pacts with a number of powers in a desperate attempt to stop him. The automaton tried to explain, tried to tell him the nature of the shell, but in his single-minded persistence, Mordo thought only to shut down the automaton's power and eradicate him completely.

A running battle across the Earth and the mirror dimension ensued... and the Earth began to shake. EXALT's purpose was fulfilled, and not a moment too soon - the contracts had been signed, every nation had quietly agreed, and in the blink of an eye the entirety of the crust of the Earth had been transplanted onto the interior of the shell - and every man, woman, and child, save for one.

Standing on a mandala platform above a desolate and empty world, Baron Mordo was given the honor of being the only human to watch Tiamut the Communicator emerge from the shell of the Earth as if it were an egg.

The Eternals, who had also been left upon the planet's surface, were likewise extremely confused by this turn of events, but their purpose was fulfilled without complication.