Marvel Magic Case Files

Chapter 940 Multi-tasking Operations (Second Update)

After Salomon got up from the sofa, he picked up his phone and sent a text message.

Natasha Romanoff carefully slipped into a street corner, leaning against an earthen-yellow wall. She pulled her phone from her full-body black burqa, glanced at it, and then gripped it tightly, muttering a curse under her breath. She knew Salomon was always busy, and she knew absolutely nothing about the Skrull settlement. The reason Salomon was telling her this was simply to have her gather intelligence within the Avengers about the attack and how they would react.

Putting aside the shock this explosive intelligence would bring her, she rarely had the chance to track the Winter Soldier between missions, let alone complete this task. She first peeked out from the shadows to confirm her target was still at the stall before lowering her head to reply. "Let Wanda complete this mission," she sent, word by word. "She can do it."

Salomon replied quickly, with a total of six short messages, each word popping out one by one.

"Wanda has a job to do."

"Fuck you, Salomon!" Natasha cursed under her breath, and then three more words popped up on the screen.

"You are welcome."

She looked up and caught sight of the security camera installed in the doorway of the house across the street. She glanced again at the phone, made in the Immortal City, and sighed. Natasha Romanov dialed the number. "Fuck you, Salomon! You're spying on me!"

"This has been the standard procedure ever since the Skrulls officially became a threat."

"What is Wanda doing? I don't think you'd let her run around like that; she's your apprentice."

She gestured to her informant to continue following up.

She spent a fortune to turn one of her target's trusted confidants against her. If this tracking mission fails, not only will she have wasted a lot of money, but her chance to track down the Winter Soldier again will also slip through her fingers.

"Sorry, this is classified information." Salomon felt his back sinking into the soft back of the sofa.

The laptop in front of him contained not only Natasha Romanov's current location and surveillance footage, but also a report from the Immortal City's psychoanalysts on the expressions of the Skrull prisoners. He processed both sets of information simultaneously, seemingly with ease.

"You can't know things you shouldn't know." He pressed the mute button and switched to another communication channel. "Very well, Ms. Jones, we need to determine whether the Skrulls can still lie after being injected with interrogation drugs. You have access to the facial recordings from the cross-examinations, a software engineer's report, and a biological laboratory's test report on the Skrulls' physical tolerance."

The so-called interrogation potion wasn't anything rare; it was even used in the academy tests of the Immortal City. However, the dosage was undoubtedly much less than in actual torture and interrogation, since Salomon didn't want his painstakingly trained students to become idiots.

The psychoanalyst was a young, blonde woman with a proud and cruel expression. If Diana Lister had heard her voice, she might have recognized her as the one who had brought her to the interrogation room in black armor.

Immortal City recruited her from captured CIA Middle East agents. Through capture, torture, and subversion, coupled with Ms. Jones's own mental illness and the mental experiments Immortal City promised her, she was eventually brought under the control of the Guardians and became a member of the Black Armor Interrogators. Some experiments, even the CIA wouldn't allow its agents to conduct openly, but Immortal City had the resources and knowledge to do so. The agents obtained her application, and given Ms. Jones's desire for treatment, everything fell into place—she not only had military experience but also no family. She was listed as killed in action on the CIA's roster, meaning no one would bother her; she was, in a sense, the perfect full-time agent.

"Is Wanda's mission really that dangerous?" Natasha Romanoff asked. "What major threat have you discovered?"

"I believe she can handle it; she's professionally trained. I mean, my training." He pressed the button. "Ms. Jones, I need your lab report in four days. Time is of the essence. Thank you for your efforts; otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to extract so much information from the Skrulls."

"It's my pleasure, my lord." Ms. Jones nodded and ended the video call. She didn't know what Salomon looked like; the person she was video calling with was a virtual 2D avatar generated through motion capture. Simply put, even if an Immortal City employee of a lower rank had the opportunity to video call Salomon, they couldn't actually see him; they could only see a cloaked figure on public routes.

“But I can’t act immediately every time I receive explosive intelligence, Salomon.” Natasha Romanov frowned, squinting to avoid the sudden sandstorm hitting her eyes. “You attacked the airbase. Do you know what your actions represent?”

"Yes, I attacked a US air force base, so what? I not only have a lot of nuclear weapons, but also a delivery system that the US can't intercept. Do you think if I stood up and dropped a high-yield hydrogen bomb on Washington, wouldn't other countries in the world call me a 'major force for maintaining world peace' and a 'partner in exploring outer space'?" Salomon said with disdain. "You have forty-eight hours. The plane will take off in forty-eight hours. If you want to resolve the issue completely, you still have the right to use a missile."

"I'm not crazy enough to bomb civilians!" she said, her voice low and restrained. The surroundings were unfriendly, especially to English speakers, and although she disliked indiscriminate killing, she couldn't avoid being targeted.

"I don't have any either, so what are you waiting for?" Salomon hung up the phone, giving Natasha no chance to retort. He shrugged at the witch, "It's just work, nothing serious." He skillfully took the nail polish and began painting Jeanne's nails. He had been in charge of this ever since he started learning oil painting, and he was also the one who chose the nail polish colors for Jeanne and Bayonetta; otherwise, Jeanne's nail polish would always be dark red, and Bayonetta's would always be black.

"After work is finished, we can have dinner once Joan's nail polish has dried."

"You promised you wouldn't bring work home." The witch stood on the sofa, looking down at Salomon. Although her tone was unfriendly, Bayonetta wasn't actually that angry, because Salomon was spending more and more time at home than before. Sometimes, the Immortal City's official business was directly handled by the Alchemist Golem, while she would lie in the bedroom and spend the whole day with her.

"It won't happen again, I promise." The sorcerer surrendered without surprise and began to change the subject, "Wanda's mission is almost complete, should I invite her over for dinner?"

"Now? Is Ghost Rider that easy to deal with?"

"I could beat that skeleton when I was still a child, so Wanda definitely can too."

"Phew!" Wanda let out a long sigh of relief as she watched the skeleton lying on the ground, its flames gradually dying down. While Ghost Rider wasn't an easy opponent, this particular Ghost Rider was a newcomer, still at the level of chasing down gangsters in the streets, and hadn't even mastered using his own flames yet. She subdued him in a short time. "Don't get up again!" she yelled at the Ghost Rider trapped under the car. "Or I'll beat you up again. Do you want to go out into the sunlight, you idiot!?"

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(End of this chapter)