Going head on against a President in his honeymoon phase is not too kind. Ellis had retaliated, of course, and convinced the Senate to strip me of subsidies. The point hadn't been to become more popular, it had been to get put on the map. Lots of people were still caught up on Blonsky and Hulk but it was going to get so much worse before it got any better at all. The world of the MCU basically laid down and took it when it came to a mass resistance to aliens. It was Wakanda's army that had turned up at the final battle.

That wasn't a showing, it was a disgrace. Bullets worked against the chitauri, Bucky and Black Widow used bullets. Hawkeye used arrows. For goodness sake, Gamora used a sword.

They needed to learn to stand up for themselves, to make a path, to wake up.

I was going to make them do that.

The mass stares of the press welcomed me onto the stage of the expo, backlit by the close up camera that had zoomed in on my face. I walked up to the glass podium and did my best to look perfectly ordinary.

"People have criticized me for having too aggressive of an imagination, for paranoia and blind fear, people have said that the world which I imagine is one of the nightmares and fairy tales from children's books." I said, getting a dig in on the President as I looked out over the crowd of reports. "We are already living in an unimaginable future. Today, an iron man flies over the United States, a unique, highly controllable war prosthesis that defends us from threats abroad. The power industry has been completely overturned by just two men. Tonight, I'm going to help us move further."

I took out a baseball and a knife, holding it up for the close up camera. "This," I said, "is a baseball." I took the knife and cut through it enough to peel it open, "As you can see, it is a normal baseball. I know that's not an auspicious beginning for an unimaginable future, but bear with me." That got a few polite laughs from the friendlier reporters.

I put the baseball onto the podium, "Now watch carefully," I said pointing the shrink ray at the podium.

I stepped back, drew the shrink ray from my pocket and disengaged the safety. I aimed and fired, and the podium vanished, sending the baseball rolling. Gasps filled the room. And I walked up to the podium as the baseball dropped and sloppily rolled off the platform.

I grabbed the podium and held it up to the camera, "This is the podium." I looked at it carefully. "Pete, could you give me the baseball?"

Pete grabbed the baseball and squeezed it, looking it over. "What's the trick?" He asked. Pete was one of my more hostile interviewers. One of the benefits of the tech press was they were all technophiles, so it was pretty easy to get them to like you as a genius inventor. But Pete was genuinely tough. "How does it do that?"

"Oh, that doesn't do anything. It's a baseball," I said. "This," I held up the shrink ray to the crowd, "does that." The room looked skeptical. "Here, trade you," I offered him the podium and he handed me the baseball, "Pass that around everybody. You'll find it is light, that it doesn't retain its weight, but not fragile or easy to crush between your fingers." And then I put the baseball on the ground and pointed the shrink ray at it and shrunk it too.

By this point, every few moments somebody was holding the podium and saying one or more expletives. I waited as the ball and podium moved around the audience, pictures being snapped for papers, the sound of amazement a constant chatter.

After a sea of hands had gone up, I pointed to one of them. "What does Trent Industries plan to do with this new technology?"

"Well, it costs about a dollar per pound at this point and you need a dose per day or so." I said honestly. "And that's a major problem for some of our hoped for applications. We're hopeful that we can get the cost of harvesting the necessary particles down over time, but until then we think that it will be a huge benefit to space construction and medical care."

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Mr. Trent," one of the reporters, Grace, a newbie at Wired, asked.. "You've shown us a baseball and a podium. Does it work on biological creatures?"

"The shrink ray causes molecular instability in biological matter that is sometimes resisted, often fatal, sometimes causing explosive liquefaction." I said. "We have no intention of pursuing further research on that front. It was a dead end." The actual explanation was that it required a stabilizing field and a brain shell protection. But it was better if I signaled to Hank Pym I wasn't looking into it.

"Mr. Trent, are you worried about military application?"

"I'm excited about military application," I corrected. "I know Tony Stark has mostly settled on power supply, but Trent Industry hopes to help the military in mobile deployments, from helicopters that fit in paratroopers pockets to whole bases that can be carried in a suitcase. I'm a patriot and I hope that we can contribute to keeping America on the cutting edge. I won't let personal politics get in the way of that."

"Mr. Trent, what if a terrorist gets access to the shrink ray?"

"Look," I said in full seriousness. "Obviously, there are some major tail risks on this question. Like smuggling a nuclear bomb into the State of the Union. We're working around the clock with government agencies to develop ways of detecting a shrunken object. Their unaltered density and decreased weight make that a fairly straightforward process. Trent Industries is keeping its sample supplies separate from our production center. And we're keeping our production center under security that makes the nuclear security look more outdated than it already is." Gotta get a dig in on the establishment while I'm here.

"Mr. Trent!"

—

After the press conference, when I had made it back to my private room, Andromeda hopped out of my pocket and enlarged.

"I didn't see anybody who looked suspicious."

"Neither did I," I admitted. I guess Hank Pym had benefited from it being his own former company when it came to getting a tip off. It was nice, really, that for once things were spinning my way.

"You sure you can't make any more of these?" She said, flexing the armor. "Hydra could use a few more of them."

"No, no, they need Gibborim tech." It had cost several potentially useful devices and a week of work, but I had managed to convincingly fake that this was the truth. Actually, no Gibborim tech was necessary. "I think Pym must have gotten his hand on extraterrestrial tech and then pretended that he'd managed to crack it independently." The key to the lie was flattery, the belief that Hydra hadn't been flat out smarted, but that Pym had cheated and lied his way to the achievement.

"That makes sense," Andromeda said, collapsing onto the couch and taking off her helmet. "Still, it's kind of great to have this."

"Yeah," I agreed, sitting down next to her. I'd made it for Andromeda without asking permission, because I figured they wouldn't be able to make a good fit with other agents and I could at least keep tabs on her. Plus, Andromeda was basically my subordinate at this point. I was a major force in Hydra, which had spared me from many negative orders. Not a lot of people were really higher than me. I was about Stern's rank, and he was a Senator!

"Well, you did great. You should be proud. Hopefully this gives Ellis pause when he wants to lash out at you again." Andromeda said, kissing me.

"We can hope," I said.

"Oh, I didn't want to distract you during this. But I got word from Pierce that Zola wants to talk."