Chapter 4988

"What's wrong, Professor?" Brainiac's voice came through.

Shiler couldn't help but cover his forehead: "Why are you here?"

"I came with you." Brainiac said, "I've long heard about the merged universe and wanted to come see the scenery."

"How's the scenery?"

"Not bad." Brainiac said solemnly, "The coastline scenery is beautiful. I saw Gotham Lighthouse so clearly for the first time. The night fishing trip was thrilling and exciting—what a big fish!"

"Are you hinting at something?"

"Not at all." Brainiac said, "I just found some interesting things online. Want to take a look?"

"I don't want to look. I need to rest a bit." Shiler shook his head, and after saying that, he changed clothes and lay down on the bed.

"I often regret that you're not greedy enough." Brainiac obviously spoke with double meaning, "You've missed too many chances to learn the truth. Curiosity should be humanity's most precious quality."

"You still don't understand humans." Shiler pulled the blanket over himself, turned over, closed his eyes, and said, "Humans also have a saying: curiosity killed the cat."

Shiler soon fell asleep, but only about two hours later, Brainiac's voice sounded in his ear again: "Sorry, Professor. Curiosity might not be the key to killing the cat. Peter Parker is calling. Should I put him through?"

Shiler turned over, covered his phone with a pillow, but soon Brainiac's voice came from the hotel's call system: "Ms. Carter is calling. Signal comes from the Renaissance Alliance headquarters."

Shiler finally sat up, took out his phone, and answered: "Hello, what's wrong?"

"Sorry, Professor, something happened. We might need your help mediating." Carter sighed, "The car is already downstairs."

Shiler sat up to change clothes, but he really didn't have time to deal with his wrinkled linen suit, so he still wore that old black suit, and this time he also picked up an umbrella.

The moment he stepped into the Renaissance Alliance office, the air dropped several degrees. Classic skin was still too intimidating—at least Bruce, standing by the wall, took a slight step back.

"What's going on?" Shiler's tone showed some loss of patience, mainly because there were too many people standing by the wall now.

On the left was Bruce, on the right was Peter. Next to Peter was Firestorm, next to Firestorm was Deadpool. Then to Bruce's left were two kids: one Franklin, one Elsa. Then in another corner of the room stood the X-Men gang. More importantly, basically everyone was injured—at least their hair and clothes were a mess.

"This is completely a misunderstanding!" Firestorm stepped forward and said, "I didn't intend to go to the hospital to cause trouble—I was investigating the truth!"

"Start from the beginning." Shiler said, "Tell me in detail what you've done since you left this office last time, from the start."

Firestorm truly didn't feel guilty. After stepping forward, he loudly said: "I said I was going to find my nephew, and this is my nephew."

He pointed at Franklin, then said: "He's a mutant with many abilities—basically, he can travel through time and space. I just wanted to go back and see who was right in the bar fight."

"When I went to find Franklin, he happened to be playing with this little girl. Franklin suggested bringing her along, and I didn't object—after all, Elsa didn't look like an ordinary person."

"We time-traveled together to the past and saw that conversation between mutants and the waiter. The fact is……"

Logan, standing behind Professor X, seemed to want to say something, but Professor X appeared to have seen through everything and didn't let Logan speak. Firestorm, however, blurted out a shocking fact: "That waiter really wasn't friendly to mutants. He even said people like them love to skip the bill, that mutants are shameless—getting beaten wasn't unjust."

"Then why did you go to the hospital to cause trouble for them!" Logan said incredulously.

"I said I wasn't going to cause trouble!" Firestorm also raised his voice, "Originally, I planned to leave after seeing this, but Elsa secretly slipped into the kitchen, found the seafood there a bit abnormal, and saw people acting suspiciously—clearly something was wrong."

"After we came back, we wanted to go to the hospital to check on the mutant who got a bad stomach, look at his medical records and test results. But who knew you guys insisted we were causing trouble and even wanted to fight us!"

"I have no superpowers—how could I fight you? I could only let my nephew step in. My nephew worried about the hospital being crowded, so if he acted, the commotion would be too big, which is why I let Elsa speak up."

"That's no excuse to keep biting me!" Logan lowered his head to look at his arm, feeling a bit resentful of his own healing ability—this little girl bit so hard his arm almost snapped in two, but because he healed too fast, now there isn't even a scar.

"If you hadn't attacked first, how would I have started biting?" Elsa also spoke firmly, "And I didn't let go because your bones are too hard!"

Elsa was obviously also quite angry—after years of biting people, she finally met a match. This bite almost broke several of her teeth. Adamantium is truly hard.

"You know my bones are hard, yet you still bite?!"

"How dare you talk like that!" Bruce also snapped, "The moment I came in, I saw you fling my daughter away—you, this damned child-abusing violent maniac!"

"I……" Logan gritted his teeth so hard his eyes almost popped out.

"I also saw you mutants chasing Jonathan." Peter also said, "He clearly has no superpowers and wasn't looking for trouble—how could you treat an ordinary person like this?"

"Exactly, I saw that too." Deadpool said, "If he hadn't timely called us, we'd probably have been beaten into the hospital by you guys."

"And you did it right in front of the kid." Firestorm obviously also knew how to take the moral high ground, "My nephew is only a few years old—can't you set a good example for him?"

"Please, it was him who came rushing in aggressively first—we were just defending ourselves." Phoenix Woman said, "Our universe's Firestorm has caused plenty of trouble—how do we know he won't set the whole ward on fire?"

"Of course you know—you're best at setting things on fire with one blast." Firestorm showed no weakness.

"Enough!" Carter shouted angrily, "What are you yelling about? Still not done yelling?!"

Shiler let out a long sigh. When mediating, he usually disliked the "each gets ten big boards" approach, but this time, both sides really had faults.

Firestorm lacks worldly wisdom—he time-traveled back, saw a problem, and rushed straight into someone's hospital ward shouting, without even thinking to call first or speak politely, which triggered the mutants' reactive response.

The mutants also overreacted—seeing Firestorm rush in, they assumed he was coming for trouble and immediately attacked.

Franklin was just full and bored—knowing his uncle likes to act impulsively, he didn't even try to stop him, and insisted on bringing Elsa along.

Elsa also bit too quickly, and picked a bad target—if she hadn't bitten Wolverine, she wouldn't have nearly broken her teeth, nor been flung away.

Bruce is overly protective of his daughter—seeing her flung away, he didn't care who struck first, rushed over and wanted to fight.

Peter and Deadpool are too hung up on loyalty—seeing their friend beaten, they jumped in without distinguishing right from wrong.

The only good news is that despite all these people fighting like this, Progress York City is actually fine.

Shiler naturally first cared about what mattered most: "How's the hospital? Did anyone else get hurt?"

"No." Carter said, "Good thing they didn't use superpowers—just fists. Still, some of their punches were unusually strong, smashing hospital beds, walls, and racks."

Shiler's eyes swept over everyone—without a doubt, the ones with the most close-combat experience and skill here are the former Spider-Man Peter Parker, the professional mercenary Deadpool, and the former Batman Bruce.

But if the first and last didn't use superpowers, it'd be hard to smash anything with fists—so it should be Deadpool.

"Alright, I'll compensate." Deadpool shrugged, "But I never wanted to cause a ruckus in the hospital—it'd hurt my popularity. I was just standing up for a good buddy—I didn't even pull a gun."

"You still want to shoot?!" Carter slammed the table.

"All right, ma'am." Shiler soothed, "Since no serious harm was done, let's just forget it."

Everyone in the room widened their eyes at him. Shiler continued: "How about letting them help you check out what's going on with the seafood?"

"I was just about to say that." Carter brushed her forehead hair aside, "That bass that jumped onto our yacht that day was tested and found to contain some unknown substance—like a synthetic compound. Good thing you guys weren't attacked by it."

"If the seafood in that bar restaurant's kitchen also has a problem, we need to figure out where this seafood came from and why it entered Progress York City."

Carter stood up, glanced at them, and said: "You all know that causing trouble like this on Renaissance Alliance turf disrupts our work—no matter how, it's not glorious."

"But to receive multiverse tourists, our staff is indeed somewhat insufficient, and I can't spare the manpower to investigate this matter. If you're willing to help, we'll let bygones be bygones, how about that?"

"I was just about to say that." Huo Liehuo stood up again, "The fish in the back kitchen are unusually large, their eyes are still red, and for some unknown reason, they are very aggressive. Aisha almost got bitten. This is clearly abnormal; perhaps someone poisoned them..."

Before Carter could say anything, the mutants couldn't sit still, and Logan stepped forward and asked: "Then wouldn't the mutants have eaten problematic seafood?"

"Yes, this is very likely the cause of their diarrhea." Huo Liehuo said, "But if going to the hospital doesn't reveal anything, it proves they weren't poisoned with ordinary toxins, possibly a new kind of toxin, or perhaps one specifically targeting mutants, since others also didn't have issues..."

"But other mutants didn't have problems either." Phoenix Girl said, "At that table, there were five or six mutants, and only one had diarrhea."

"We will investigate as much as possible." Professor X said, "If there are any new leads, we will inform you immediately. Also, give me the test sample of that fish and the compound report; I want to have someone else look at it."

"The seafood heading to York City should all be supplied by those two Sea Kings, right?" Peter said, frowning, "As long as we figure out which supplier that bar gets its goods from, we'll know where the problem lies, and we'll investigate from that direction."

"I still need to take Aisha to see Thomas." Bruce held Aisha, then said, "She needs to be the flower girl at the wedding, and there's a lot to prepare, so we won't participate."

After saying that, he took Aisha and left. Carter couldn't help it, after all, they were guests. Franklin was similarly let off lightly.

Finally, Carter turned to Shiler and asked: "Do you have any thoughts? Professor?"

Shiler shook his head: "It's not that I don't want to investigate, it's just that too few people here understand Catholic wedding traditions. When the wedding venue starts being decorated, I'm afraid I'll be invited to participate, and I won't have that much time."

"That's true." Carter nodded and said, "Still, the wedding must come first. Sorry for dragging you in—please go rest; there's still a bonfire party tonight."