Jump 332: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Volume I

Jump #332: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Volume I
>The Empress: Initiative and practical actions that promote prosperity, comfort and luxury.
Is this some sort of Greater Good thing? Is this like, to get Star Trek, you have to have the Atomic Horror at the start of the 21st century?
>Age: 1,210
>Location: Austria, 1942
>Identity: Tech Expert
>Drawbacks (+1000): Glory of a Monster, End of an Era, Deus Ex Machina
[mistakes were made]
>Soundtrack of the Galaxy (Free)
The swingin' sounds of the big band era, more like!
>They Call Me "Star-Lord" (Free)
No they don't. Nobody calls you that, Peter.
>Professor of Asskicking (Free, Tech)
I don't think the details matter, really. I'm an alien as it stands already, I don't need to hide my knowledge.
>I Am Iron Man (1800, Tech)
Now, this is a useful thing. Being able to create Stark tech is great - especially since this is a century ahead of where I start. Not that this has ever stopped me, of course.
>Retro Engineer (1500, Tech)
This sounds like a rather useful thing - reverse engineering, finding uses, experimenting without breaking things.
>A Funny Thing Happened (900)
A funny thing happened on the way to the forum. I accidentally fell out of the sky in 1942 and accidentally-on-purpose stopped the Holocaust. Whoops.
>Super Soldier (700)
Well, I wouldn't say I'm a super soldier per se, but I'm an alien, so by human definitions... sure, I'm a super soldier.
>Asgardian (300)
An Asgardian not of Asgard. Shades of Babylon 5. If the Collector wasn't worried about accidentally sparking a war, he'd probably be all over me.
>Holotable (Free, Tech)
Into my warehouse you go. People aren't ready for you and I kind of don't need this unless I'm TRYING to look flashy.
>Nitramene (Free, Tech)
Joy, another unstable compound for me to play with. How about I just lock it up in a vault for now, it worked for Howard Stark, right?
>Asgardian Armor (Free, Asgardian)
Stylish yet functional! I can get behind this armor.
>Arc Reactor (0)
Cold fusion! Too bad it requires relatively rare elements to be sustainable, and synthetic elements to actually be clean.
For anyone who doesn't realize it: palladium is more expensive than pure gold. This is not the ideal solution to the energy crisis... but it is a stopgap.

Side note: Asgardian plus retro engineer plus all my other tech-related perks? This I can figure out Asgardian tech given a little bit of time... but Asgardian plus Super Soldier plus A Funny Thing Happened? More bullshit than bullshit, though it's not my raw power that we're worried about during my stay. At least not yet.

Now, it is said that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I disbelieve this to be true involving anything but the laws of physics, and even then I don't quite trust them, but I found the statement to be true here. I fell out of the sky in Austria, true, and was promptly set upon by Chitauri. Sure, it's only a small squad of them, but they were definitely waiting for me. They knew where and when to hit me. And sure, they're cyborg aliens with energy weapons, but I don't think they were prepared for an Asgardian to turn into a shoggoth and show no mercy, rather than battle honorably.

Regardless, first thing on the agenda is to end the Holocaust before it gets going too strongly. Sure, I can't prevent it entirely, but I can intercept train cars full of people so that they're taken to safety. And then start stealing all the people from the camps and systematically destroying them once they're empty. All the while, Chitauri trying to take my head almost as often as I pop up.

Lacking anywhere else in the world that can support millions of people on no notice at all... I end up bringing the would-be victims of genocide to Konasse. Yes, the city still follows me. Right now, it's in a nice spot in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific, and definitely not to be seen on a map. Honestly it doesn't change anything in the war beside giving the Germans a reason to scream about sabotage, but every time they start rounding people up and persecuting them, I just swoop in and disappear them.

After all is said and done, in the autumn of 1942, I go to the United States, give Roosevelt a phone call (because I have his phone number, thank you West Wing), and after scheduling a meeting at a convenient time, I walk into his office, introduce myself, and tell him what's going on in Europe. Yes, I'm from out of town, as they like to say. Did you know that Hitler cut a deal with aliens called the Chitauri who are being very stingy about sharing their technology but who are also attacking other people beside me? Allied soldiers, for example? Not a happy time. Now, I'm not going to hold your hand, but I can give your people a lot of ideas, and you have a lot of people that can work on them. What you need is a force multiplier.

What you need is a mecha.

By the way I'm starting the Illuminati because there's a secret organization that wants to end the world and I want to save it, because there needs to be a fallback to stop the worst case scenario after it starts. Welcome to the club, Frank.

In any event, it takes a lot of work and negotiation, but sharing my knowledge (very sparingly) and pointing people in directions they'd never considered... well, let's just say that when Captain America starts storming the front, he's not just going to have men behind him getting shot down, he's going to have diesel-powered mechs behind him, charging forward.

Oh, speaking of Captain America, by early 1943 I've earned enough trust that I can be one of the bland men in a suit standing by when Erskine's experiment takes place. And when the Hydra agent goes for his gun to shoot him, I pronounce four words in an eldrich tongue: "YOUR HEAD A SPLODE."

The hydra agent's head transforms into a crimson mist in an instant, and Erskine is saved. (I freely admit I did this because I want that formula, mostly to fix future mistakes because people are idiots.) Erskine enters witness protection afterward, and I erase his paper trail so he can live a quiet and happy life. I even wipe part of his memory on his request, so that he can't follow the steps that he did to replicate the formula without years of study. He becomes a high school biology teacher, and finds himself surprisingly fulfilled in that role.

Moving right along: the war comes to a close in the usual way. The Metal Gears ("You knew?!") help even the battlefield with the progressively crazier shit that the German army pulls in Europe, while the battle in the Pacific takes a more traditional route and history goes the way it did. The Soviets copy the Gear design based on wreckage they are able to swipe and find that normal tanks are frankly more efficient. So does the United States, but a certain degree of flexibility is present and the Cold War occasionally sees skirmishes between US-built Metal Gears and much more shoddy Iron Curtain Gears. Or just Iron Gears.

It's a good thing nobody has ICBMs yet, and frankly in the real world you'll find SLBMs are too damn big for a walking platform to deploy. Also massively unsafe. Unlike some universes, no one decides to make the walking tanks nuclear-capable in this universe, a fact which many people are grateful for in retrospect.

Moving forward: the Chitauri continue to attack, both me personally and Europe, and their attacks spread throughout the world. SHIELD is formed. It is given a mandate by the UN security council and is to protect the world, hold the unsteady peace from non-state actors, and conceal the secret of hostile extraterrestrials until the world is ready. It and employs a great many men in black to confiscate what they can, even if 99.9% of the tech is trashed. SHIELD pulls Captain America out of the ice shortly after the end of the war, though once he's free of the wreckage of the aircraft, the wreck breaks away from the ice and buries itself in mud at the bottom of the ocean, beyond anyone's reach for now.

Status quo is maintained throughout the fifties and sixties, but thanks to ideas being dropped that make scientists research in different directions, breakthroughs keep occurring regularly in many fields. Moore's law doesn't apply so much as would be expected - instead of processor power doubling every year and a half, it's more along the lines of just under a year. Medical science advances apace, and while the Weapon Plus program lacks mutants to play with, they do crank out would-be heroes who generally work under the SHIELD banner. In the background, there are heroes at the street level, and certainly not just in the United States, despite what some would have you believe.

Some countries draft them. The USSR is not an exception to this and the Red Room is one of such programs that use them. Omega Red is the pinnacle of the program - or would have been if his head hadn't spontaneously exploded after he'd had carbonadium tentacles implanted in his arms. Such a pity.

Explorer-1 is the first satellite to reach orbit, launched by the United States, and the space race was neck-and-neck in the mid-fifties for a while until a joint moon mission saw the United States and the Soviet Union land a six man crew on the moon in 1959. No one has flying cars of course, but ARPANET is made in the sixties and rolled out to major universities in the early seventies. Eight tracks are a product of the fifties, and by the mid-seventies, disco is being distributed on SDAT players. In late 1977, satellites pick up what appears to be a number of comets making their way from the outer solar system, expected to have a close pass to Earth the next year. The Cold War conflicts are rapidly negotiated to armistices in fear of the Chitauri trying a new tactic.

October 1978. The comets change course for Earth. SHIELD prepares for war. World governments are briefed. The latest generations of arc-powered Iron Gears and Metal Gears meet the Ultron forces that land, and are badly outnumbered. Perhaps not outgunned - the Iron Gears utilize particle beams, while NATO's Metal Gears use railguns - but fighting off the alien invasion needs more.

They need heroes, and they will get them.

The Avenger initiative doesn't formally name the hero groups, but in addition to soldiers worldwide fighting off the aliens, heroes join them. Dr Druid. Magneto. The Winter Soldier. Captain America. The Iron Man, Howard Stark. Stonewall. Doctor Doom. Union Jack. The list goes on. They expected a Chitauri invasion, not an invasion of mechanical beasts from the world over, but the technology on Earth is in the sweet spot where it's effective, but not easily subverted by what calls itself Ultron.

The war takes three years and costs five hundred million lives. A tenth of the global population. Ultron has literally decimated humanity.

April 1981, victory is declared as the last remnants of Ultron on Earth are hunted to extinction. A new golden age is seen as technology of all kinds advances by leaps and bounds, and the Thirty Month War sees political boundaries redrawn in its wake. The Winter Soldier is repatriated after fighting beside Captain America awakens his supressed identity.

The status quo is no longer proxy wars, but heroes and villains playing cat-and-mouse games and military developments casting a wary eye but few active conflicts. Arc reactor derived power is useful in remote areas, but solar is king and bioplastic is durable but breaks down on exposure to enough sunlight or bacteria. Villains are a far cry from terrorists - Doctor Doom and Magneto are tolerated, largely because they are smart enough not to gather up a body count. Hydra is a known factor by now, however, and hero and villain alike can be seen joining forces to deal with them, as they've become known as the reason the Chitauri continue to attack the Earth.

And so it goes, until 2014. The Avengers, with squads led by Captain America (now Bucky Barnes wearing the mantle), Iron Man (passed down to Tony Stark by his father), and Thor (an Asgardian welcomed with open arms) burn out the final infestation of Hydra after an attempted takeover of SHIELD that failed miserably, and only served to expose the last remaining agents.

SHIELD never found the Tesseract - never needed to - and instead it found a place in my warehouse... alongside five other baubles, because when you have portal devices, you're hardly bound by distance or dimensions.

I'm pretty sure that somewhere in the universe, both the Collector and Thanos were cursing my name as the jump drew to a close.

. . .

What do you mean it isn't over? I checked, that's all of them.

. . .

Speak up, I can't hear you.

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