Phil left.

He didn’t say yes to the suggestion, but he didn’t say no either.

Luke could only shake his head and return with the empty bottle. Old men were so stubborn! They wanted something, but didn’t say anything, and someone else had to take the initiative.

In fact, he knew why Phil had come.

With his and Tony’s support, New SHIELD’s sea base was already in the water.

After this, Phil would be busy with the new base for a while.

Tony’s underwater base hadn’t been built yet.

Firstly, he didn’t need it as urgently as Phil did. Secondly, he wanted to let Phil give it a go first, and then learn from the other man’s experience.

Of course, Phil didn’t lose out.

Most of the materials for this sea base were from Tony and the bigshot, and he had been given the technology for free.

Even so, the manufacturing costs still reached three billion dollars.

If Tony sold it to the US military, the price would be at least ten times higher, and he would have to take out a lot of good things — like the arc reactor.

Compared with the first version of Cobra’s base, New SHIELD’s sea base was a lot better.

First of all, it was a lot more mobile and fortified.

Luke’s base was a processing plant, while Phil’s was for logistics and was a battle fortress. These modifications made sense.

The new base was well-hidden and positioned very strategically.

They weren’t active in Asia to begin with – this fortress just needed to move around the Atlantic to cover a large area of Europe, America and Africa.

This way, it wouldn’t be a problem for New SHIELD to carry out large-scale operations in most parts of Earth.

Although this medium-sized base had 500 personnel on paper, it could accommodate 1,000 combat soldiers in an emergency, which was enough.

There were now about 2,000 people in Phil’s New SHIELD.

Even if it expanded a little in the future, this base could still be used for three to five years.

Once there were more people, it wouldn’t be too late to open a second sea base then.

That was what a modern industrial society was like.

Once the first product was finalized, it became substantially easier to manufacture it on a large scale.

If the sea bases of New SHIELD, the Avengers and the Bat Squad ran into each other while on patrol in the future, they might even be able to use signal lights to greet each other.

…

The family gathering was fun. Two days later, Tony sent a piece of good news.

After hearing the news, Luke replied in surprise, “You took back Loki’s scepter?”

He was actually a little depressed, but in the end, he was still happy for the Avengers’ victory; it was just that he made a mental note of a certain female agent.

What a joke! Not long ago, Natasha had shared more than 20,000 experience and credit points with him.

She was a 1-star teammate, which meant a 10% share rate. In other words, retrieving Loki’s scepter this time had been worth more than 200,000 experience and credit points.

If Luke had taken part, he could have earned tens of thousands of points.

Tony was inviting him to a victory celebration, and all the Avengers would be there.

It just so happened that Thor had slipped down to Earth for a rendezvous with Dr. Jane, and so had participated in this mission ‘in passing.’

Tony suggested that Bale could show his face while he did the rounds. After all, nobody knew what Batman looked like.

Luke thought for a moment, then sneered. “Not going.” He then hung up.

Such a huge stack of experience and credit points, and you didn’t call me. Are we even teammates?!

Besides, was Luke a person to move at someone’s beck and call? As if!

Loki had brought the scepter to Earth, while Tony had deactivated it in the Battle of New York. Who knew how Thor and Tony would bicker over this matter now.

Luke wasn’t their father, and was too lazy to play referee for those two big babies.

For the next few days, Luke continued to train his youngest sister, Cindy. One of his clones roamed around outside to earn points, and the other focused on researching and improving the nanosuit.

Suddenly, Alfred sent him an urgent message.

Luke frowned at the image of the Hulk wreaking havoc in a city.

He then looked at the location… Hm, it was a port city in Kenya, Africa.

Even if he rushed over now, the Hulk would already be done by the time he arrived.

However, a familiar figure soon appeared in the image.

The Hulkbuster fell from the sky. A red-and-gold counterpoint to the green Hulk, they immediately started fighting.

After thinking for a moment, Luke decided to send a communication request to Natasha.

The female agent was good at sneaking around and had good intelligence. She should know what was going on.

After the call connected, a man said, “Whoever you are, the user can’t pick up right now.”

Luke instantly matched the voice to the database in his head. “Hawkeye? This is Knight. What’s wrong with Natasha?”

Hawkeye was silent for a few seconds before he quickly said, “We ran into one, hm, two troublesome enemies. One of them can affect our minds and cause hallucinations. We aren’t in our right minds right now.”

Luke asked, “What about you?”

“Hah~” Hawkeye smiled self-deprecatingly. “This isn’t the first time I’ve run into something similar.”

Luke thought for a moment, then realized that Hawkeye was referring to when he had been under Loki’s mind control. “I should be able to deal with this problem, but it’ll take me at least six hours to get there even if I set out now…”

Hawkeye: “Should we contact you after we’re done here?”

Luke said, “Okay. Be careful. Hm, take care of Natasha.”

Hawkeye didn’t say anything else and hung up, but he mumbled to himself, Why does it sound like this person has a thing with Natasha? But… what about Banner? He’s messing around outside right now!

Less than ten minutes later, the Hulkbuster grabbed Dr. Banner, who had returned to his ordinary form, and flew off.

Luke snorted. Dr. Banner was in serious trouble this time, and so were the Avengers.

The Hulk had wreaked havoc in a city without any enemies, and a conservative estimate was that hundreds of people had died.

Tony left quickly and didn’t give the Hulk much time to go all out, but international public opinion definitely wouldn’t be good.

A live broadcast was the most straightforward evidence. It was impossible to cover this up.

When Tony had reported the good news a few days ago, Luke had checked their movements.

The last operation which involved all the Avengers had been in Sokovia in Eastern Europe.

That had been nothing for Tony, who wanted to personally retrieve Loki’s scepter.

Natasha had been investigating Hydra in Europe for the last two years.

Back then, she had obtained a lot of information on Cobra from Luke. She had found traces of a particular Hydra branch, and had found a Hydra stronghold in Sokovia.

For the Avengers, attacking this Hydra stronghold was similar to finding a new grudge with an old enemy. Even staid Captain Steve had no objections to the operation.

However, this operation touched many nerves in Europe and Russia, and both sides were quite unhappy.

Sokovia was the buffer zone between both sides. They each had their own puppets and fanned the flames behind the scenes without intervening out in the open.

Who knew if the Avengers’ sudden appearance meant that the American government wanted to directly interfere with Sokovia and create new chaos?