00112. Mao King of Genosha


    Spoiler


    Four in a row?!?! Someone send help, this isn''t normal!


    [copse]


    It was nearing sunset in Genosha as multiple portals opened up and allowed a bunch of news reporters along with their camera crews ess to the ind. They were greeted by arge meeting room with an amazing view of an ind and the beach not far away in the distance.


    Every person in the room was especially invited to interview Mao after his actions earlier in the day. Each and every one of them was considered one of the best in their field and it was rare to have so many of them gathered together in one ce.


    Minutes passed as they took in the amazing view and talked quietly among themselves. After ten minutes or so, the main door to the room opened up. As Mao stepped into the room everyone quieted down and looked at the young man who entered.


    Mao smiled at everyone and said, “First I want to thank all of you foring here today. I am sure you have many questions and I will dly answer as many of them as I can. If you’ll follow me, we’ve set up an area where you can conduct your interviews.”


    One of the more famous and slightly pompous of the reporters asked, “You’re going to answer our questions? I was promised an interview with Mao, not a teenager.”


    Maoughed hard for a few moments, after he calmed down he said, “I am Mao. Now no more questions for now, just follow me.”


    Every person in the room held back from calling the young man a liar, but most of them knew the first question they wanted to ask. Mao led everyone out of the room and through a few hallways until they moved into a new room. The room was massive in design and built to make anyone who entered it feel small. The oppressiveness of the room was only overshadowed by the white monolith that sat in the middle of the room.


    The monolith was enormous and shaped like an Egyptian obelisk. Etched into what seemed to be a single piece of white marble were names. Not just a few but tens of thousands of names were etched into the object. Everyone seemed to slow their pace slightly as they walked past the monument and saw the small que near the base that read, ‘In memory of the Genoshan people, your sacrifice will never be forgotten.’


    After they exited that room, they moved through a few more hallways before they exited the building. Outside they were greeted by a small area set up for an interview with chairs set up for Mao and each reporter. A few other people were already there and greeted everyone before showing them where they could set up.


    Mao moved to his chair and waited patiently for everyone to get in ce. Once everything was set he nodded to the reporters and said, “I understand that this is a little different then a normal interview, but I am a busy man and don’t have the time to do individual interviews with all of you.”


    Mao spread his arms wide and said, “Since that is the case, I set this up. I will give all of you three hours of my time. Please take the next ten to twenty minutes to organize yourselves and your questions. As I would rather not waste time answering the same questions over and over again. Once you are all ready your three hour window will begin.”


    All of the reporters quickly started to talk amongst themselves trying to figure out who would ask what questions. It took about fifteen minutes but they decided they would each ask one question at a time. Once everyone asked a question, they would start again. As for who would go first, they decided that with coin flips.


    Once everyone was in their seats and the camera’s were rolling the first reporter asked, “You told us earlier you were Max Eisenhardt, better known to the world as Mao. While you look a little like him, everyone knows that Mao is close to eighty years old and you’re… A teenager. Can you tell us where Mao is and when he will be showing up?”


    Mao smiled before he said, “I admit, being this young again is a little weird for me. You have no idea how hard it is to control myself sometimes while I have teenage hormones running through my body. But that doesn’t change the fact that I''m Mao.”


    Everyone wanted to ask the same question, but their professionalism stopped them from acting out. That didn’t stop them all from turning to look at the person who was allowed to ask the next question with a little bit of jealousy. The woman smiled as she asked, “If that’s true, may I ask how you were able to reverse the aging process?”


    Mao nodded as he said, “I personally don’t know how it works myself, but some very smart people I know figured it out. They showed me proof it worked and then offered me the chance to extend my life.”


    The next reporter asked, “Is there a chance they might offer this service to other people?”


    Mao shrugged his shoulders as he said, “I honestly have no clue. I was surprised they offered me the chance in the first ce, if I am being honest.”


    The next reporter decided to ask one of the questions they originally wanted to know and asked, “Earlier today you, along with some help were able to stop a major terrorist attack on the US. Some rumors have been going around that you possibly had a hand in that attack with how quickly you responded to the crisis. How would you like to respond to those allegations?”


    Mao smiled wide as he said, “Simple, we did know about them. We knew there would be some type of attack and we responded to the first nes that were hijacked immediately. Unfortunately we didn’t know about the second set of nes.”


    The next reporter followed up and asked, “How did you know there would be an attack in the first ce? Were you tipped off by someone or are the rumors true?”


    Mao shook his head as he said, “No, one of my team members has the ability of precognition. It’s the reason we were able to be as effective as we were today.”


    From there the interview dived into more in depth questions about the day''s events, the help Mao had and what his team did with the terrorist. There were other questions here and there about other less important things. But a random and somewhat simple question derailed the rest of the interview and changed how it should have ended.


    One of the reporters who ran out of good questions to ask, decided to change it up and asked, “You said before we started you only had limited time for an interview. As far as I know, you’ve pretty much disappeared from the world for the past year or more. Could you inform us of why that is?”


    Mao nodded and gestured to everything around him as he said, “I was helping to build my kingdom and make sure my people were safe.”


    Everyone paused to look at each other for a few moments, before the next reporter hurriedly asked, “Could you borate on that for us? What is your kingdom''s name and where is it exactly if you don’t mind us asking?”


    “It’s called Genosha and it’s a small ind off the coast of Africa. As for how I came to acquire it, it’s simple. I killed the old leaders of the country and freed the citizens they kept as ves. The white Egyptian obelisk we walked past early was built in memory of the ves who unfortunately couldn’t be saved.”


    From there the reporters just couldn’t stop themselves from asking endless questions about the ind and what happened. Mao decided to end the interview there and offered the reporters the chance to explore the ind with a camera crew all day tomorrow. They would be given a host to act as a guide and free reign to explore wherever they wanted. Of course everyone was happy and agreed to Mao’s offer before they left for the day.


    vvvvv


    The interview aired on mostworks that night and ended up having some of the highest ratings for a news rted broadcast to date. But one thing that was on everyone''s mind was how Mao was the new ruler of a small ind nation.


    A lot of people came out with crazy conspiracy theories about how it happened. When it happened and why it might have happened. Besides conspiracy theories, UN officials and other governments with ties to the old Genosha government were up in arms about the country being taken over.


    Some government officials were already pushing for actions to be taken against Mao and his new Genosha. Boycotts and military action were just a few of the things being discussed within hours of the news breaking.


    But just a short twenty four hourster and everything changed. All of the bad press. The talk of possible sanctions, boycotts and military action disappeared. Instead everyone was praising Mao while still going over all the evidence of the old Genosha government’s actions he provided.


    It was almost enough to make the world and to a greater extent the US forget about the terrorist attack that happened only a couple days ago. While everyone was focused on Mao and Genosha, a little known terrorist group came out and imed responsibility for the hijackings.


    It pulled focus back to the recent attacks and to what the US government nned to do going forward. The US president came outter in the day and announced they were going to fight a global war on terror and called for their allies to join them.


    As Theo watched the announcement he let out a sigh before he turned back to his training. He was hoping they might have changed the course of history, but it looks like even with most of the disaster averted, Hydra was still able to seed in their ns for war.


    Theo spent the next hour practicing his chakra control on his rock wall before he changed into Ezekiel. He nced at Tao and Agatha as he said, “I’ll be back in a few hours for magic training. I need to check in with Tony.”


    Agatha smiled as she said, “Have fun on your y date.”


    Ezekiel held himself back from responding as he made a portal. It took him about half an hour before he appeared in Tony’sb carrying food. Ezekiel nced over to see Tony who was currently focused on a new project as music red through the speakers.


    Ezekiel set down the food before he walked next to Tony and hit the spacebar on hisputer. As the music cut off Tony looked up to see who it was and couldn’t help but smile. He stood up from his seat as he said, “You always have perfect timing, I’m starving.”


    “You wouldn’t be starving if you didn’t lose track of time.” Ezekiel said.


    Tony waved thement off as he moved to go through the bags of food. Ezekiel shook his head before he hit the security button and decided to look over what Tony was currently working on. A couple of projects were open on Tony’sputer, most of them were new weapons. But one of them caught Ezekiel’s eye and it was named J.A.R.V.I.S.


    Ezekiel explored the coding for a few moments before Happy burst into the room. When Happy saw Ezekiel he put his gun away and moved towards Tony as he said, “Can you not hit the panic button whenever you show up?!”


    Ezekiel pointed at the button as he asked, “That’s a panic button? I thought it was the button used to call you when dinner was here?”


    “Why the hell would Tony even make a button like that?!”


    Ezekiel shrugged as he said, “No idea, but it seems to work whenever I press it.”


    “Because you always bring food!”


    Tony chuckled slightly as he watched Ezekiel messing with Happy. Happy for his part, decided to drop it and pulled out one of the boxes. As Tony and Happy started digging into dinner Ezekiel nced over his shoulder as he asked, “You''re trying to make an AI?”


    Tony finished a bite of his cheeseburger before he said, “It’s not AI, it’s Just A Rather Very Intelligent System.”


    “Your naming sucks.”


    Tony frowned as he said, “Give me a break, it was the best way to name it Jarvis.”


    Ezekiel shook his head and said, “No it’s not. You just make an AI and then give them a name. You don’t have to make some weird acronym with words to give them a name.”


    Tony nodded his head as he swallowed his next bite of food before he said, “Your acting like building an AI or something close to an AI is easy.”


    Ezekiel had a far away look as he said, “It’s not, it takes years of work and tens of thousands of coding hours to make something even remotely close to AI. Even then it still takes a moment of pure brilliance to figure out the missing piece and have everythinge together and work.”


    Tony dropped his food to the floor as he looked at Ezekiel and said in an excited voice, “You actually made an AI!”


    Ezekiel broke out of his memories to see Tony getting up from his chair as he asked, “Where’s your AI? Can I meet it?”


    Ezekiel shook his head and said, “Unfortunately you can’t meet my kids currently.”


    “Kids? You made more than one? Why can’t I meet them? Is that why your programming is so good, it’s made by AI?”


    Ezekiel shook his head as he said, “I don’t feel like exining it to you. Plus you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. As for my programming, it’s good because I made it.”


    Tony was going to press for more information when Ezekiel said, “Tell you what. If you finish up those cell tower transceivers in a week, so we can start testing them. I’ll help you improve the coding for Jarvis, sound good?”


    “Deal!”


    Tony moved next to hisputer and pulled up some schematics as he said, “Here they are and I already have five of them being built so we can test them.”


    Tony shed a big smile at Ezekiel as he asked, “When can you start helping me with Jarvis?”