In the meantime, as Alex was slowly making his way closer to getting inside Susan Storm’s metaphorical pants, there was a significant event about to occur on Earth-Z.

Almost a year had passed in what remained of North America since Alex brought the widows to the planet. The reason it was limited to North America had to do with both the limits of the fragmented Time Stone and the limits that Alex had in channeling its power. Unlike simpler planets like Farm and Research Earths, there were true cosmic horrors on Earth-Z—some of whom Alex still wasn’t sure he could take care of without tapping into Wanda’s Source of Chaos and his Infinity Stones. That was why he limited the influence of the time dilation to the North American continent, where the Widows primarily operated. The dilation factor was also not as insane as that of the two Gaia planets, limited to one day outside being equivalent to a month inside. The biggest reason for that limitation was the ‹Eldritch Class› abomination of North America. The huge eye abomination that held an eerie resemblance to the eye demons in the previous Chaos Dimension was the most problematic. Which was understandable. It had instantly repelled Jane and would have killed her if not for Alex, despite the powers that she held.

In the year that had passed on the continent, the number of Alex’s Black Widows had grown to a staggering five hundred members. Though four hundred of those were still young trainees, with most of them being ten years old, and fifty of them were practically infants. They had since stopped taking new applicants because training any more wasn’t feasible with their experienced personnel being limited to merely a hundred.

While the widows had limited their expansion due to focusing on quality over quantity, their settlement was the complete opposite. The Prime Bastion, as Alex liked to call it, had aggressively expanded over the past year under the protective umbrella of the widows and the floating island of The Sanctuary. With a virtually impenetrable line of defence and an endless supply of resources from multiple planets, they had undoubtedly flourished immensely. The Widows had already cleared most of the surrounding areas of abominations, making sure that none of them came anywhere close to their settlement. That meant the widows were free to focus on training the new recruits while slowly being corrupted by the tentacle monster that pretended to be their suits. While that had reduced Alex’s continued flow of EP, he wasn’t too heartbroken about that. Earth-Z was never going to be a sustainable source of EP for him. That honor went to the special prison on Farm Earth. Of course, there was the occasional assassination or kidnapping operation that he had the Widows run for him in Gaia when he wanted something done and didn’t want to do it himself. These things kept the women sufficiently occupied.

However, that didn't mean that the presence of the Widows had disappeared from the settlement. There was now a dedicated exploration team of the settlement separate from the Widows that was focused on locating new settlements and migrating their population into The Prime Bastion. That was where the Widows showed up. Such a migration always attracted a large number of abominations that were mostly dealt with by them. It both established their prestige in the eyes of the newcomers and made sure that the migration went smoothly without any accidents. After all, the exploratory team neither had combatants on the level of the Widows, nor did they have the benefit of Alex helping them from behind the scenes.

Over time, despite having some reservations, Yelena had come to love her job as the leader of the widows. Not only that, she was very good at it. But after spending a year in a desolate wasteland, some of them were getting jumpy and agitated. After all, Alex wasn’t completely brainwashing them and was simply giving them some bonus comforts in life. That led to a significant number of them asking for a small vacation from all this stuff. They wanted to go home.

In the main control room of the flying fortress now dubbed The Sanctuary, Alex and Yelena sat on opposite ends of her desk. She wore her usual skin-tight black combat suit with prominent glowing red lines all over it like a circuit— the five prominent lines on the choker around her neck and the cuffs of her suit representing her status as the Deputy Commander. Her hair was loosely hanging from her shoulders as she looked over the applications of over thirty-five widows who wanted a break from all this and wanted to splurge some of the money that had been promised to them for going on this mission in the first place.

“Oh my god, this is such a pain,” she suddenly groaned and leaned back with her hands tightly covering her face. “How am I supposed to let thirty-five widows walk away for a month. Who is going to take care of their responsibilities? We have four hundred children to take care of, and barely a hundred nannies.”

“That’s what you’re reducing the widows to? Glorified nannies?” Alex asked her as he stood up and approached her.

“I kept telling you to stop after we crossed two hundred recruits, but you kept pushing for expansion. Of course, it’s a problem.”

“If I’d stopped, I would’ve never found Irene. Do you have any idea how useful her powers can be if cultivated correctly?”

“That is, if there is someone present to cultivate those powers. You’re nothing more than a voice in her head, and don’t even show up in front of the widows. I’m the one dealing with all that.”

“As much as I would like to help you, I can’t be fully hands-on with everything,” he said, holding her hand and making her stand up. “We’ve spent a year developing an appropriate authority hierarchy for the widows. I don’t want to ruin all that by actively involving myself with the day-to-day administration stuff.”

“Can’t you at least do some of the nanny work for the kids? Even just the basic stuff like giving them modifiable clothes.”

“Nope,” he refused while wrapping her arm around her waist and holding her tightly to himself. “My only physical connection to them is going to be limited to the choker until they turn eighteen. Personal rule. You know how my outfit creation works. That is a hard limit for me. Plus, if the widows are the ones raising them, they will make sure that the girls are more than just brainwashed soldiers. That’s the whole reason we added all those amenities to make sure that they get to have a fulfilling childhood.”

“You’re right… I would hate myself if these girls had to go through what we went through as widows,” she nodded, putting her forehead on Alex’s shoulder and lightly rubbing her nose on his neck. “But that still doesn’t change the fact that I cannot have the widows leave like this. Once I approve these applications, there will be more of them to come. I think it’s time to start rolling out those incentives that you were talking about.”

“Yeah, I guess we can officially roll out the Gaia Credit system for them,” Alex nodded while leading her forward. He sat down in Yelena’s seat and had her sit on his lap.

“I think you should release Gaia for them as well,” she said, snuggling closer to him and wrapping her arms around his neck. “Her system is pretty robust already. It shouldn’t be any issue. Plus, they get to have an AI to help them handle things that they don’t understand about having you as a suit.”

“No, Gaia’s not ready for supernatural stuff just yet,” he said, putting his hand in her hair and lightly massaging her scalp. “I’m considering an update for her before I make her more widespread among my forces.”

“Just don’t lose control of your AI...” Yelena felt pleasure from his scalp massage and moaned lightly. “I’ve seen enough Terminator movies to know how that ends.”

“You barely need to watch ten minutes of the first movie to get that idea.”

“You get my point.”

“I know, don’t worry about it,” he said as his other hand made its way to her butt. “Now, announce a meeting for all widows. I’ll explain the system to you while they gather.”

“Can you explain things while we have sex real quick?” She asked with an aroused expression. “It’s been a few hours since we’ve done it.”

“You’re becoming more and more of a nymphomaniac, you know that?” He teased her. “I’ll have a lot of fun one day when you fuck up and I put you in a cage to deny you any pleasure for a few weeks.”

“One, it’s your fault for making me addicted to all this pleasure. And two, never gonna happen,” she said. “If you try to unfairly treat me like that, I will complain to my sister.”

“Always the Nat card…” Alex sighed with amusement as he turned Yelena around and pushed against the desk as her uniform retracted into her collar. He grabbed her ponytail in a rough grip and pulled her head back before pushing himself into her, making her moan loudly.